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, “I will not descend from your unholy canal. I will break through your spine to emerge, because I’m a man of purity!” 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, “Yaru illa bharade, illa baru du illa“—”No one will come, no one came.” 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.

“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. 

11.13.2024

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.

Flashbacks from Viral’s hospitalization, from those tenuous days while he was being treated for meningitis and encephalitis alongside two other infections.

Day 48

Though I have hardly spent any time in it, the picturesque home we are renting not far from the hospital, is a home after my own heart. Full of art, light, comfy seating, garden views and bookshelves. So many bookshelves! And such a wonderfully eclectic assortment of books. The Phantom Tollbooth, and The Great Brain next to Ovid and Outliers. Amanda Gorman’s poetry collection, “Call Us What We Carry,” next to Chanel Miller’s, “Know My Name.” And on one shelf, this slim, nondescript book: “Creativity From Constraints: The Psychology of Breakthrough.” I often judge a book by its cover. This one is unspectacular. Breaking my pattern I pick it up anyways and put it in my bag to read at the hospital. Later, while Viral takes a daytime nap after a very interrupted night, I open it. This book, I soon realize, does not deeply interest me. But I am intrigued by its theme, and a few lines in early chapters…

“The more constrained the solutions path, the more variable, the more creative, the problem solvers.”

“Operators in well-structured problems with single correct solutions, like directions to memorize, calculate exactly or copy correctly, do the opposite of constraints for creativity. They preclude the surprising and promote the expected.”

“I like to think of constraints for creativity as barriers that lead to breakthroughs.”

I have written, in a very different context and time, about the power of self-imposed constraints and their relationship to breakthrough solutions. But right now that is of no consequence. It strikes me that I have never felt more constrained or less creative than I have felt this year. What we are in the middle of is a very ill-structured problem, and there are no easy or clear solutions. It occurs to me that I might well be missing an important boat here.

When Viral wakes up, I have some questions for him. As has become the norm of this time [in the early days of his treatment for multiple brain infections,] he picks up the thread wherever it’s handed to him. He does not hesitate before answering and there’s a degree of clarity and awareness in his responses that I find astonishing.

With chemo and other kinds of strong drugs there can be a dampening of life force at every level of one’s being. I know this first hand- for a time it extinguished any sense of vibrancy or enthusiasm I had. You’ve been on a far more punishing regimen for so long now. How do you navigate this?

What’s the creative response to more and more limitations? When there’s so much sweetness and support around, that inquiry becomes easier to imagine seeding and playing with. “I want to just try this” Even simple things like — the pros and cons of, “I just want to lie down” vs. “I want to kind of build off of where things are in conversation, just for the sake of exploration and satisfaction and value.”

[This is part of his gift — to attune to what he is receiving, even in the midst of extreme challenge. And to live creatively from that simple abundance.]

What do you feel the satisfaction comes from?

Something that has not been quite met yet, that finally gets met in anywhere ranging from a small to a big way. 

[“Something that has not been quite met yet, that finally gets met…” The poetic quality of his articulation in this time mesmerizes me. He is not speaking the way he normally speaks, and yet he has never sounded more himself.]

And where does the value come from? Is it from the experience itself or the learnings within it, or–?

Maybe it’s the juxtaposition of the two, the experience itself and then you have some fresh inclusion. 

[“Some fresh inclusion.” How I love that way of describing learning. A newness that we take into ourselves.]

I don’t want to romanticize any of this — what you are engaging with in terms of the memory loss is hard and it’s gritty. Like being lost in the wilderness.

Even this whole thing of– in this moment what am I doing? And what was the conversation about? [Those gaps] can be jarring, or it can be like being shaken up in a good way. In a fresh way. 

How do you find yourself orienting within the wilderness experience of it all?

There’s just a lot of trust and a lot of immersion.

What do you mean by immersion?

In a way the best choice is to immerse. It’s not the only choice, I mean you could play it differently. 

How do you immerse? Is it a non-resistance? 

That may be the best way to put it — but I think there’s also the creative act as well that’s possible, it may feel appropriate to explore it from that angle.  You don’t necessarily have to squeeze in.

[I love how he has just framed this. You don’t have to passively fit yourself into reality like it’s a box with a fixed frame. You can enter and act on it in mutually creative ways.]

Like — what could be mine to do here?

Yeah, yeah.

Almost like you’re the artist but you’re also the canvas?

That’s a brilliant way to put it. 

***

‘In art, truth and reality begin when one no longer understands what one is doing or what one knows, and when there remains an energy that is all the stronger for being constrained, controlled and compressed​.”- Henri Matisse

Matisse would know about creative constraints. Complications after surgery for cancer nearly claimed his life, left him bedridden for months and eventually confined him to a wheelchair. In this time he developed his distinctive cut outs technique, a style of collage making that he called, “painting with scissors.” The whimsical pieces he created in this style are among the most admired and influential works of his entire career.

With Viral, in the hospital during the daze of these days I see some parallels. He no longer knows the things he used to know in the same way he used to know them. And there is an energy in him that is “all the stronger for being constrained.” It burns in his eyes, I can feel it under my fingertips when I touch him. I hear it in the quality of his words when he answers certain questions. In conversation he is making cut-outs of his own in this time. And to me, they are distinctive and invisible works of art.

He is also continuing to make actual art. Simply, unselfconsciously and with no pre-meditation. The themes and his unpacking of them make me wonder what his deeper experience of this time is. It feels like he is in rich contact with something beneath the surface reality of this intensive hospital stay.

What does this painting evoke for you?

Viral: Opportunities of the heart: even where things are blank or unclear there is the gift of being able to see through the opportunity frame of the heart . Blockages of love: there is some paradox to that. One simple thing is there is no blockage of love when love is at the center of things. Versus, when it’s not, things have different flows. It seems like maybe there are times when there’s a deeper inspiration underneath that is ready to flow into the space of love, but you just miss the window. Then it’s like, “Okay I might have missed some window — but now I’m onto my next window and it may look different.” An opportunity of the heart is something that is going to open up your heart in a different or richer way, for yourself and for other people. I think the potential is there for anyone at any time. The only question is, are the conditions there for you to genuinely connect to the potential. Try and experiment a little bit and see what kind of nourishment comes from that. And it may not be there, which is fine. Opportunities of the heart and blockages of love — they both exist on the stream of awareness, and you want to be aware of both. And overarching it all is the connection to principles. 

What does this piece that you just created, bring up for you?

There are all these interplays going on constantly. And with certain kinds of presence and the eyes to see, some greater order reveals itself in a way that adds meaning. Expectedly or unexpectedly. Though always more “interconnectedly” than generally would have been clear or apparent. Our holding capacity, our volume as individuals is less than the power of the exponential. When interconnected forces can be together, there is that kind of power magnification.

***

What would you like me to write about next?

[He strokes my cheek gently] “Write what comes to your heart you beauty-pie.”

I have no hair, no eyebrows and no eyelashes right now– I’m hardly a beauty-pie.

But those chocolate brown eyes are still the same.

How do you always know how to make me feel better?

I don’t know that I always do. But I see your goodness and it’s reflected in my goodness. 

Evolution:

We are survivors of immeasurable events

Flung upon some far reach of land

Small, wet miracles without instructions,

Only the imperative of change.

-Rebecca Elson

Almost exactly one month ago, after a long series of immeasurable events, Viral and I moved back into our sweet home in Belmont. For the first time since the beginning of the year, it’s just the two of us in this little bird’s nest of a house. And I can say now, what I couldn’t say with conviction for a long while: We are doing well. We are continuing, day by day, to heal. It took an army of angels to get us here. You, reading this are likely one among them. Invisible forces hold the stars and our lives in place. Through silence and across vast distances we know we have been held by so much more than we can fathom. Thank You. For all of it.

In the two and half months since his discharge, Viral has been steadily getting stronger every week.His short term memory, while still affected, is responding beautifully to therapeutic interventions and the healing passage of time. His last bone marrow biopsy in August showed no indication of MDS, and he has been transfusion independent since early July. Those seeing him now cannot believe how well he looks and sounds. How simultaneously unchanged, and also transformed he is. On my end, after completing chemo, two surgeries, and starting on hormone blockers (that I will take daily for the next five years), I’m now a third of the way through radiation treatment, with Viral as my charioteer. Each morning when I look at him and consider how far we’ve come, it seems nothing short of a miracle.

Getting to this point has not been easy. Witnessing what Viral endured over the course of his hospitalization brought me to my knees day after day. In the face of the precipice we were teetering on, my own cancer journey, symptoms and side effects faded to little more than a side note. In the underground tunnel of that time, nothing mattered more to me than being by Viral’s side, trying to tune into every dimension of his treatment process, trying to find the levers to bring him ease, ensure his best chance of recovery, and honor his deepest aspirations. It was also a time of being chased by my own demons and doubts. Of being riddled by my fears, and freighted with choked-back grief. I sat down to write this update dozens of times, only to find myself immobilized, and unable. It was all too close, too stark, too shrouded by strong and wordless emotions, and far too little sleep. Looking back at that stretch of the road, I still find myself to a large degree, dumbstruck.

But I do want to say this: the kindness, quiet heroism, and humanity of the hands- the hands of family, of friends, and of strangers– that served Viral and I in this time will forever hold my heart in a colossal debt of gratitude.

After two and a half months in the hospital, Viral was discharged on July 15th. At the time he could walk with support, but was still on heavy duty IV medications [that I learned, with great trepidation, how to administer through his PICC line.] He was barely able to eat, was hardly sleeping, had trouble remembering the year, where we were, and what exactly was going on. His short term memory was still profoundly impacted, but his sense of gratitude and his trust in the ultimate laws of the universe were unshaken. He moved into the spacious multi-level home we had rented in Portola Valley and began the difficult work of navigating daily life in the wake of a bone marrow transplant, four serious infections, and the loss of working memory.

One week later, after more than seven months of selflessly accompanying us through the multi-dimensioned intensity of Viral’s hospitalization and my chemotherapy treatments, Nipun and Guri transitioned back to the many other demands of their lives. The baton was gracefully passed to my sister Deepa, her husband Ramesh, and our seven-year-old niece Dhira (the other love of my life.) This healing trio, who flew in from India to be with us, could not have landed at a better time. Their unassuming competence, care and closeness worked a slow and quiet magic on my ragged spirit.

Two weeks after Viral’s discharge, I underwent a double mastectomy. The next morning, upon waking Viral began walking towards me, stopped part-way and then fell backwards all the way to the ground. It was a miracle that he was not injured. But we found ourselves back at the Stanford clinic multiple times that day, and almost every day of that week, and the next and the next. I remember those initial days as a daze of love and pain, laughter and tears, fierce fragility and fiery strength. Like the period of hospitalization had been, these early weeks after discharge were full of profound paradox. Full and empty. Surrounded and solitary. Poignant and playful (as life under the same roof as a precocious seven-year-old is wont to be). Then in mid-August I learned that the margins of the removed tissue were not clear, the very next day I went under the knife again. And something shifted indescribably. In that liminal state between sedation and waking, I found myself chanting. Bowing to the divinity that takes such dazzling and destructive forms, that dances in each atom and embeds a marvelous music even in the heart of the mundane, and the seemingly monstrous. I felt in those moments, fearless and grateful, and willing to go on this divinely dark, and (by definition,) ambiguous adventure.

In the four weeks that we have been flying solo back in our own home, Viral has contracted two more infections and has had to navigate among other symptoms and side effects full body rashes, neuropathy in his feet and a sensitivity to sunlight. During the first year after a bone marrow transplant when all immunizations have been wiped out, and as immunosuppressants are tapered, the risk of opportunistic infections and GVHD flareups come with the territory. Patients and their caregivers must learn to be vigilant without being hyper-vigilant. Disciplined without being obsessive. Cautious without being fearful. Dancing on the right side of those lines while we were both in treatment, and with the added complexity of Viral’s short term memory loss has been challenging and, as Viral would say, evolutionary.

While he has been at his most tender, vulnerable and receptive edge, I’ve found myself needing to be more practical, organized, clear and calm than I’ve ever been. In some ways we have found ourselves switching places. And now we are learning how to dance in our new shoes, leaning into what this phase of the journey demands of both of us. And as always he is the more graceful and gentle one. Even in his most debilitated state in the hospital, even at the height of the brain infections that turned his world (and mine) upside down, he was always the one person I knew who could understand, at the deepest level, what we were going through. Even when he didn’t know what decade it was, or what continent we were on, even when his seeming lostness deepened mine, he was always my compass and guide. Walking this labyrinth with him feels like the privilege of many lifetimes.

Here are a few windows into his state of mind and heart during those fevered, other worldly weeks in the hospital…

Does it take a lot of energy to have to reorient yourself so often, given the gaps in your memory?

Viral: For me it’s not energy to reorient — that’s not the manifestation, as much as knowing I see a partial picture in this moment. When you think about it, that is always the case but there is a sort of a threshold up to which you don’t feel comfortable with the gap in the information that you have and beyond which you feel comfortable enough to figure out the rest of the gaps. For me right now, it’s not that severe. It’s like a door in the night — you can barely see the outlines of a door, and you don’t quite know what’s behind the door. There are some assumptions that there could be something valuable behind the door, but maybe also some concerns around, how do you really know whether the door is really worth opening?

Have you felt despondency or dejection in this period?

I think versions of it in terms of tiredness, intimidation and just feeling like “whew” and also just questions about resourcedness. In the field of different types of experiences these things are there in the field. Generally there is a lot of resourcing and so I don’t feel spun around in it, and it’s made me think what creates those circumstances. I don’t know. But you can imagine how it would be without that anti-spin force that is also at play. So the spin tendency will come in — fear, uncertainty, disconnection- whatever it might be but there is also this strong counter force — counterforce may not be the right word — the presence of another force and it is somewhat mysterious how the insertion  of that other side of the coin or whatever, becoming aware of that, it lets you see differently.

How would you describe this time?

First of all, it feels like waking up out of a long and deep sleep. But also, it’s iterative, it’s not complete, and it keeps happening in a way. What feels constant in this process is presence and love. And by presence it’s kind of like, something so familiar you can’t be confused that it’s anything but your honest truth of being. And love is an honoring of the intensely interconnected and interrelated reality of an increasingly evolved community. And it’s not just community– there’s a deeper point there about the inner and the outer. It’s not just about community manifesting outside it’s about realizing that sense of community inside. 

What’s your feeling state right now?

Relatively peaceful. Little tired. Kind of taking in new information, trying to connect some new dots without getting fixated on connecting too many dots with limited information. Trusting in you and the context to reveal itself as these moments go by.

How do we work through this time, you and I, given all the challenges?

This is a long path and we can’t get too paranoid about it. We have to work with what’s in front of us in each moment. Know that we’re not seeing the full picture and that we’ll never actually see the full picture and that’s okay. To just fully act and to fully be with sincerity and compassion. Your evolutionary journey will continue. You’ve got so much love in your heart to offer and you keep offering it, and that’s part of your path. I believe we control the pace of the evolutionary journey. The universe is kind that way. 

You are my partner in all adventures and all paths, and I think it’s safe to say this is not the first or the last path we will be traversing. We just do it with a sense of togetherness and sincerity and love. The circumstances will keep evolving. There will be seamless times and challenging times and all we want to do is keep growing and loving through it all together. The question is going to be, how do we smile through it? How do we connect through it? How do we grow through it, work through it and love through it, with interconnectivity with others, and with humility, gratefulness, and courage?

We are counting our blessings, and in this time I am counting so many things that a few short weeks ago I wouldn’t have known to include. Viral is walking without a walker. He is able to stand at the sink to brush his teeth. He can take a shower, sit on the sofa. He can bring a cup to his lips without shaking.

The doctors and nurses are well-pleased with Viral’s swift progress. We’re relieved he is no longer in acute pain. There is a sweetness to this time. Though there are still many unknowns, much complexity to navigate, and still much ground to be covered before we can consider a discharge date, there is too, a quiet sense that he is held. That we are held.

Above is a diagram created as a quick way of orienting Viral (and myself) to what has happened, and what is happening in this time. He was having to re-adjust multiple times a day to suddenly finding out he is at Stanford, post-BMT, navigating a host of debilitating infections. At some point we were getting lost in the thicket of complex treatment details that his memory has temporarily lost access to. And it was draining his energy. Every time the teams of well-meaning specialists burst into the room with their routine questions and jarring updates (peppered with the intimidating names of multiple drugs, advanced tests, and disease details,) we’d watch Viral valiantly marshal his limited physical resources, and his remarkable internal ones, to try and integrate and respond to everything they were sharing. It would unsettle him in subtle ways, not to be able to do this, and each time he would be left trying to sort out all the missing pieces.

It struck me over and over again, how his focus in all of this was on trying to support whoever came into the room. He wanted to be in meaningful connection. He wasn’t overly interested in, or concerned with his experience as a patient. Something in him deeply trusted that part was taken care of. The frame that he was most alive to was that of being a collaborator in a shared process. I wanted a way of reflecting that back to him. So I tried to create a high-level, simple, pictorial summary of his/our journey that he could resonate with and build off of. I’m not an artist, but I figured he’d give me points for effort 🙂 When I showed him the diagram, I narrated the flow of it for him in words:

“In May of 2024 you were admitted to Stanford hospital, a few days later we were thrilled to have you go through a bone marrow transplant. Every BMT comes with unexpected twists and turns. In your case you came down with intense fevers and a few infections. The medical team here was able to diagnose and start you on the right treatment. You’re responding to it beautifully, and the infections are getting better. Now we’re in June, and you’re in the “Building strength” phase. You’re getting stronger every day, step by step, and we’re all healing together. The heart in that circle, with you, Nipun, Guri and me, represents everyone whom we are connected to both in visible and invisible ways. There’s a multidirectional dance of offering and receiving and healing that’s happening. And through it we flow to the edge of discovery together. We each have our own mountain to climb, and we do it each in our own ways, but we are all connected at the base. And we flow into the wider world with our learnings, our light and love. And the cycle continues as we continue to build strength, step by step, and dance and flow and lean into the edge of discovery again and again. Because of the intensity of the infections and the inflammation that happened in the brain, some of your memory is temporarily offline and you don’t always remember being admitted here, or that you had the transplant. But those details aren’t deeply important at this time, they’ll get clearer eventually. We’re in this new phase now and we need you do to exactly what you’re doing– you’re building strength and being a core part of this deep, collective process we’re in.”

“I love it,” Viral said, “This is amazing.” He says that every time he sees the drawing. And I bring it out multiple times a day. Some of the doctors and nurses have been subjected to it too 🙂 As rudimentary and unrefined as it is, it approximates some of what really matters to Viral, and where he innately sees value. As we wait for his short-term memory to re-emerge as the doctors have assured us it will, this little scribble allows us to ignore the threads that tie us in knots, and instead pick up the ones that he/we are drawn to explore in this uniquely potent time.

***

There is something beguiling and out of the ordinary, about our current conversations with Viral. It feels at times as if he has arrived back in our midst from somewhere at once faraway and unutterably near. A place that cannot be named or visited like a country. A place that cannot be described except in koans and codes. Below are nuggets from sundry conversations Guri, I and other dear ones have had with him over these past few days. Like all excerpts, they are by definition incomplete, and missing the contextualizing frame of the surrounding dialog. And while I try to transcribe as faithfully as possible, these efforts aren’t perfect. My apologies in advance to you dear reader, for any ways in which this muddles or distorts Viral’s meaning. [I know in advance that he himself, gracious as he is, will forgive this without a second thought.]

How are you feeling right now? There’s a freshness in terms of aliveness. You’re not fully arrived and you’re not fully departed. And then there’s the practical aspects– it’s been unclear what is coming up next in terms of different injuries that have happened… And on the flip side there’s all the glory of livingness, that’s alive and possible and experiential. And then there’s the collective living of that, whatever the collective in that moment means. That has been beautiful as well. So it’s like okay– you want to live your life with authenticity, joy, and a sense of aliveness, and if you do that then everything else is details in terms of how it shows up.

What is the value of being in the present moment? I think fundamentally for me it’s ultimately about where your attention is genuinely called, and what does it mean for it to be called. If you really are alive to that, then there isn’t —any, “I should be attentive to this,” or “I should be doing this” Those things can be great creative constraints. Like, “My values and aspirations tell me I’d like to be doing such and such, but when I don’t go in that direction there’s something deeply valuable to learn from that.” Because in general, we tend to learn from where the attention moves, and what that reveals. [attention always moves in the present moment.]

Have you felt alone or connected or both during this period? Both alone and connected in some fundamental ways. Everything feels connected and interrelated for the most part. and I think there’s also definitely an element of fundamentally different or unique, specific channels that you are walking through or experiencing that others won’t automatically see. 

Are you comfortable with that kind of aloneness? I think it’s the nature of the universe. I don’t know that I find much reason to argue with or resist that. 

What is this period evoking in you? A kind of gentleness and fruition. A unique, gentle and kind energy. 

How do you experience your self in this time? The thing that keeps coming up is, there is this core attention–or consciousness, or however we want to name it–  from which we act and think and talk and “consciate,” and all of the other things. Generally it feels very solid– but it’s actually not. And in these types of moments you really see that.  I know for instance, that I will only catch pieces of what someone is talking about, but I will need to make my own story out of that– including with my own story.

That’s true – we always only hear a part of the story, even our own, and we construct from there. Yes and what I mean is something even more fundamental than that. We use up a certain kind of fundamental energy in just being the way we are.

The mind typically imposes continuity on experience, but in your case at this time that’s not happening in quite the same way. What does that feel like? You get to examine the actual experience when you don’t have the experience of that other type of continuity — and that can be both exhilarating and completely overwhelming, and depending on where you are on the spectrum you will try to adapt accordingly.

What does adapting to not having the solidity of continuity look like? The crux of it is developing some amount of — a set of qualities — including some amount of curiosity, some amount of fearlessness, some amount of assuming goodness and benign-ness. At the same time protecting yourself from where those conditions may not be met. 

What is it that needs protection?Maybe somewhat ultimately, but maybe somewhat confusingly — that need for protection is what needs protection. If we buy into a certain amount of. “I need protection for this,”– then that becomes a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

***

For the last few days I have been giving Viral a black pen and a blank sheet of paper in the morning. I ask him to let the pen move in whatever way feels most natural in the moment. Then I give him some brushes, an open paintbox and ask him to add color in whatever ways feel in flow. He tries, unsuccessfully each time, to get me to paint on his behalf. He does not think of himself as any kind of artist. But I’ve always been struck, even in his casual doodles, by the unselfconscious freedom and potency in his lines. And now in this twilight zone we find ourselves in, I’m interested in what might emerge through him in the wordless medium of form and color. And what words he might find afterwards to describe the emergence.

 Title: The World of Possibility, June 24th, 2024

What does this painting evoke for you Viral?

Logical creative possibilities that are seeded from a place of structure and generative force. And then the way it propagates…there  are things that support the propagation at both upper and lower ends. They make the expression an expression of possibility. And then there’s this watchmanship that’s underneath it all. Watchmanship is not the right word– it’s guardianship. The green one, and the brown one too, they are noble platforms. And these are eggs (streaming out) into the world of possibility. Then there’s the sky, ever potent, ever present, ever watching… 

“It is strange to be here,” wrote John O’ Donohue, in the opening lines of his touchstone book, Anam Cara. “The mystery never leaves you alone.” It IS so strange to be here. And as for the mystery, it has us by the scruff of the neck. Are we carried between its jaws like prey by jungle cat, or like kittens by their mother? On some days its hard to tell the difference. But being here with Viral makes me curious about it either way.

One afternoon, last week, with the clarity that sometimes flashes forth even in the midst of his fever-dazes, he says to me, “You have limited places where you can take wild swings. But you have to take those swings while you can. You have to show up on the playing field.”

Wild swings. Is this whole period a series of them? Is that how he sees this stretch of the road? Talking to Viral in these past weeks has often had a certain dream-like quality to it. This is heightened by the fact that hospitals are not tethered to the earthly rhythms of night and day, and also by the fact that right now, Viral is not moored to time or place in the ordinary way. At times, when he speaks, it feels like his words comes to us from between two worlds. He has always had a unique form of eloquence. That eloquence now, is the same but also different. There is a fluency, originality and poetry to it– these things were there before, only now they seem much less mediated by the mind. He speaks with heightened thoughtfulness, and yet there’s far less thinking behind the words. He is using the rhythms of speech– but it often feels to me, like a form of singing.

When I am not caught up in the many demands of this period, when I’m not devoured by its unknowns, and my own heartache, I discover that there is a quiet voice whispering to me below the surface. And I know beyond my earthly knowings that all is well and all manner of things shall be well. And I find that I am deeply grateful for, and delighted even, by the dimensions that are blooming in this crevice of timeless time that we have fallen into. This beautiful being whom I’ve been married to for almost nineteen years has never been so simultaneously familiar and utterly mysterious to me.

Sometimes familiarity and mystery, play against each other like the facets of a diamond. Each catching the light and reflecting it in dazzling ways. Viral’s body language is intimate to my heart. The way he tucks his chin in and cocks one eyebrow quizzically when he has his reservations about something, the way he wrinkles his nose and smiles with his eyes in response to humor, the precise way he clears his throat before speaking, the meticulous way he cleans the lenses of his glasses, the prayerful way he folds his palms over his chest when sleeping on his back, the manner in which his gaze softens and shines when it catches mine, the way he— I could go on and on. I know by heart the way he does a thousand times a thousand times a thousand different things. But now, in this altered reality, these intimately familiar gestures, shades and nuances of being flash forth, poignantly alternating and sometimes merging with, intimations of something more enigmatic, nebulous and inscrutable.

He is at once both utterly the same, and incredibly new. In this time he has been at once both deeply tapped out — and profoundly tapped in.

***

During the most difficult stretch of my chemo (which even at its most challenging was exponentially easier than the road Viral has traveled,) I wanted nothing more than to just be within the experience as simply as a stick on the ground, or a stone at the bottom of a river bed. Empty of opinions about the present, or ideas about the future. Carrying only the honest weight of my being, and the weightlessness of a transparent mind. Nothing more and nothing less. Watching Viral live through the intensity of the past weeks it felt like I was watching him enter that space of a paradoxically alive inertness.

“Where do you disappear to in those intense times?” I ask him one day.

“I don’t go anywhere, ” he says quietly, ” I am right here.

“Does your mind go to the pain and discomfort?” Guri asks.

“It’s not quite like that,” he says, “It’s just — moment to moment.”

***

It amazes me. The cogency, clarity and insight that has surfaced throughout this time, despite the formidable degree debilitation. At the mundane level there are blank spaces in his mind, that will need to be filled back in, but there are also dazzling connections being made, even in the midst of the storm. Even his doctors are starting to see it. “What I’ve seen in you over these past weeks,” says one of them, “Is equanimity. I don’t come across that in people in your circumstances. And yesterday you said something that really stayed with me. You said you are ‘trying to attune to whatever is arising.’ I don’t have many patients who think like that.”

That kind of attunement, in the crucible of this time brings with it the flame of quiet revelations.

***

“You have certain choices. Is this a period of determination versus I’m just here for what’s going to happen? First and foremost it’s a practice of just being true to your journey. What is it that we are empowered by? What is it that we are empowered by, even when we are being challenged by something, or being driven to do something different than what we wished to do in the moment before? That’s kind of what I get interested in– like, what is the true exploration?“

 Do you trust life? I think you generally have to- but you also have to have a healthy ability to go either direction.My natural orientation is towards the unknown. What does it mean to be at the edge of discovery, the edge of aloneness? Things are always knowable to the next level of your understanding, and that edge is not something to shy away from. It’s something to attune to. That attunement is the basis for the confidence to go forward. How do you have your own experiments and learnings that you adopt as time goes on? And how do you make it so dynamic that it’s not about what you think it should be? It’s about what is moving your heart. You value the depth of the discoveries you’ve made up to now. Then those things start to be combined. New combinations and permutations happen, and at some point something new emerges. In this process we keep coming back to some form of experience. Maybe it’s something you need to iterate on for a while. Maybe there’s some evolutionary honing that’s happening in the moment. The process is dynamic and courageous…

Ultimately what I want is to be more of an expression of what is goodness.

***

From a conversation yesterday morning…

What is your spirit doing in this time? Attuning to the emerging nature of things. More specifically, [inquiring into] what is healing? What is the role of the individual, and the role of the collective? And what is the intersection between the two?There is something about living into that, as unknown as it might be. There is something to a playful dedication to this collective set of principles. It feels so satisfying when creativity is there, playfulness is there, and the emergent and collective nature is there. Then we start tapping into the source of things. I’ve also been playing with certain inquiries. How do you receive? How do you offer? How do you experiment and synergise intentionally?

Is opening yourself to receiving the same as opening to learning? Nice nuance there. I think receiving is a precursor to learning. If you’re opened yourself to receiving, you’ve opened yourself to learning and to acting. Your being is available to integrate yourself into whatever you’re inspired to do. 

How do you open to receiving? I think you actually have to gauge what your authentic relationship is with that which you are trying to open to. What is it that you are connecting to, and how resonant is it to open yourself up to that.You want to open yourself in a healthy way — not overly opening yourself up in an untimely or unskillful or unwise way. 

How can you tell whether it’s skillful or not? Ultimately I guess from your own experience but until then I think from your intuition. Asking 1. Is this worth learning from? 2. If yes, how so, why so, where so?

***

Watching him over these past weeks that were filled with such physical pain, at times Viral has seemed to have the face of a child. His eyes gazing at the world around him, with such heartbreaking innocence, trust and vulnerability. At other times he seemed positively ancient. His face in those moments, the face of a very old man– hollow cheeks, sunken eyes, shriveled mouth. How strange it felt to see past, present and future in a single beloved countenance. A reminder of how we carry it all within ourselves.

***

He is doing better now. What a blessing to be able to say that! There is still a ways to go, but the signs of improvement are many and meaningful. The last three days have been a turning point. He is regaining mobility, clarity and capacity more quickly than anticipated. Today he sat up, he walked, he ventured outside of his hospital room, he wore his regular clothes instead a hospital gown. He was able to remember the names of his nurses. He was able to interact with multiple groups of people, and able to enjoy a small celebratory dinner with Nipun, Guri and I. These are small things at one level, but right now they count as enormous.

“What feeling-state do you find yourself in right now?” I ask him this evening. “I feel deep relaxation,” he says, “and tenderness and the sense of a very clear emergence, and an emerging stability. In an odd kind of way, this time has also been very humbling. Not conceptually but in a more lived way. Along with this there is a strong component of letting go, letting grow, letting flow. There isn’t a defeated sense of, “Oh no, I can’t do this!” Instead there’s an attuned clarity, joy, purpose, interest and heart movement. These things seem ultra important. Not just at the individual level but also the collective one. Why are we attuning together, and for how long? Maybe it’s for five minutes. And maybe it’s for 500 years.“

With a bone marrow transplant so much can happen in that treacherous window between the annihilation of the old immune system, and the phoenix-like rise of the new one.

And so much did.

***

The drugs make his limbs tremble. His fingers, darkened from chemo, shake violently as he attempts to bring a cup of water to his lips. He can no longer stand or walk on his own, and requires assistance for all the basic activities of life. For well over a week his body is wracked by relentless fevers that often raged above 104.The fevers clasp him tight, loosening their hold only very briefly, before laying claim to him again . His whole body is shivering, and we are told not to pile on blankets, but to place ice packs on him instead. We hate doing this, but there are no better options. He does not complain. Ever. His face takes on a quality of absorption, and it’s as if all his energies are settled within. His body is going through what it is going through. He is not pushing the experience away, he is not desperately seeking relief, he is not asking those around him for anything. There is a nobility to his silent endurance. It tears at my heart. When he sinks into the fiery ocean of a fitful sleep I wish I could reach him under the waves of pain, but that place is un-enterable. I hold his hand, stroke his forehead, listen to his breathing, to his quiet, occasional moans. I see the long and lovely length of him in his hospital bed. So much has been taken from him seemingly overnight at this stage of the journey. And yet his spirit is intact.

It has never been more luminous.

***

He has so little strength, such short periods of lucid wakefulness, and in those windows of time I see him directing what little energy he has, towards truly seeing people, and letting them know what he sees. “Thank you,” he says to C, who has stopped by to empty our trash bins, “Thank you for keeping us safe through the work that you do.” “You are both confident and gentle, he tells K, “That’s a rare combination.” To J, he says, “It seems like you’ve always followed your growth journey wherever it’s taken you. It takes courage to do that.”

Even now he tries in so many little ways to take care of me. It is second nature to him. Even when he is hands down, the one most in need of care.

***

Over these past couple of weeks Viral has endured acute physical pain, near-constant exhaustion, deeply debilitating bodily weakness, delirium, and the erosion of many of the landmarks that a working memory provides. Here in his hospital room, nights and days blur into one another, a stream of injections, pills, IV medications, vital sign readings, blood sugar tests, and more. He’s had two MRIs, two lumbar punctures, several CT scans, multiple x-rays, EKGs, EEGs, countless blood tests, and cyclonic visits from teams of experts from multiple specialties, who blow into the room with their considerable expertise, their repetitive inquiries, their varying degrees of sensitivity.

“What is your name?” Viral Mehta. “When is your birthday?” January 9th, 1979. “Where are you?” Stanford hospital. “Why are you here?” I had a bone marrow transplant.

Over and over again, day after day, the same questions, the same answers. Until one morning something changes. “What is your name?” Viral Mehta. “When is your birthday?” January 9th, 1979. “Where are you?” A nice room. “Why are you here?” To connect with good people.

“You are in the hospital because you are sick,” says one of the doctors (not one of my favorites). Viral responds in a perfectly polite and utterly unfazed voice, “We’ll see.”

On this journey that is now going on nine years, Viral has never deeply thought of himself as ill. “You’re healthy, and you just want to get healthier.” A gifted naturopath had said this to him years ago. It resonated with Viral’s own felt sense of his condition. It still does. Meanwhile, the ground has shifted under the rest of us as we consider the implications of a mind that no longer knows exactly where the body is.

But where is the mind? What is the body? And does anyone really know?

***

The signs have been there for awhile, but were confused with drug-fevers, and hospital-induced delirium. After flying in the dark for days, we learn in stages, that Viral is navigating two separate brain infections. One caused by a bacteria, and the other by a virus. This in addition to the fungal and bacterial infections already identified, and being treated, in his lungs and his blood. Meningitis. Encephalitis. Inflammation in the temporal lobes, impacting his memory. Words we’d never anticipated hearing on this journey. The doctors say he has an unusual combination of infections. We are in uncharted territory. They put him on an even more aggressive and complex regimen. There have always been all kinds of x factors on this path. Now there are exponentially more. But with time and with the right treatments they see a way forward to full recovery on all fronts. His fevers are dissipating, and as the inflammation slowly reduces he will get better, his memory will come back. With physical therapy his strength will return. He has multiple experts discussing all angles of his treatment, and we are seeing early signs of improvement. “We are cautiously optimistic,” says one of his doctors.

“He is a warrior,” says his nutritionist.” “I feel like when people go through something like what he’s going through, you get to see who they really are at their core, ” says the nursing assistants helping us today, “Whatever core qualities they have get amplified. And he is just so kind- even through all of this.” She turns to Viral, “All of us love getting to help take care of you because of who you are.”

***

Who are we without the reliability of our everyday memory? Shorn of it, we are stripped down to something more essential than the mask of personality. To come undone in this way would be disastrous for many of us, myself included. When there is nowhere left to hide, will the self open like a closet to reveal skeletons? Or like a shell, disclosing its pearl?

***

Viral’s short-term memory and some of his long term-memory have temporarily gone offline. He does not fully remember being admitted to Stanford, or having a bone marrow transplant. He does not remember the acuteness of his fevers or the tumult of all the tests he has been put through. He does not remember that I am being treated for cancer, and that he was a pivotal part of helping us plan for Nipun, Guri and I to be together during this period of our dual health journeys. Initially we tried to fill the gaps in his memory by telling him these things, over and over again. Eventually realizing that for the time being these details are not going to stick. His uniquely sharp and gifted mind cannot track and respond to things the way it has been accustomed to.

Yet in some fundamental ways he has never been more himself.

Unfailingly Kind. Appreciative. Selfless. Fearless and Tender.

I have never loved him more.

***
For a while, every time he was told he’d had a bone marrow transplant Viral’s first response was, “Whhatt?!” [in an endearingly familiar tone, not of dismay or horror, but of astonishment]. Second response, on learning more about all the different kinds of treatments and care he is receiving, “This is amazing!” And third response, “I’m so lucky.”

Amazement and luck are not the words that immediately come to mind when I consider our situation. I love that they are his.

It reminds me how amazing he is.

And how lucky I am.

***

“Crack open my shell. Steal the pearl.

I’ll still be laughing.

It’s the rookies who laugh only when they win.“

–Rumi translation, by Haleh Gafori

Even through this time, his sense of humor is deadpan and delightful. It catches us unaware in many moments.

When his well-built physical therapist walks in, the tele-monitor starts beeping. “It knows the muscle quotient in this room just went up by a lot,” says Viral. “Who am I?” Nipun asks him during one of his night time vigils. “DJ Dave,” says Viral. “No, that’s not it.” “Javier.” “No. I’m your brother!” Viral laughs, “I know that Nipun. I was just joking.” 🙂

In the middle of severe debilitation he asks for his hand sanitizer. “You are the king of hygiene!” I tell him. “The king of hygiene and high jinks,” he says with a twinkle.

***

He has gotten very weak. Even rolling on his side requires help. Standing up yesterday, even with the assistance of two people, taxed him to the point where they suspected a possible seizure (which later thankfully turned out not to be the case.) The heavy drugs are helping with the infections but the process is slow, and everything costs the body. It takes a certain kind of strength to be as vulnerable as he is in this time, and not crumble. To be able to accept so many dimensions of support, and the change in his capacities, without consternation, frustration, bitterness or shame. His acceptance imbues a kind of dignity to the whole process. I am in awe of his ability to adjust so quickly and gracefully to these new circumstances — our new circumstances.

“You have an extraordinary degree of humility,” I tell him. “I’m not sure about that,” he says, “maybe I’m just very open to the fact that I have limited answers.” That just may be one of the best definitions of humility I’ve ever heard.

“This whole time you’ve never complained about anything- not even when you are in the most intense pain.”

“Everybody has got their pros and cons,” he says.

***

“We don’t rise to the level of our expectations. We fall to the level of our training.”

Viral often quoted these words by the ancient Greek poet, Archilochus. Now he is living them.

How to communicate to you his quiet steeliness, his utter sweetness, his selfless instinct to serve others even when he is not quite sure where he is or what is happening? I have lost count of the times he has asked me to follow a nurse or nursing assistant out of the room to see if she or he needs anything. I’ve lost track of how many times he has asked the person who is helping him, “What can I do to make things easier and more seamless for you?” When I am giving him food he wants to make sure everyone else has eaten. When one of the many machines in our room started beeping he said, “Pavi– can you check on that? I think someone is suffering.” When he is asked how he himself is doing, more often than not his answer is, “Fantastic.”

How to convey the brutal beauty that sears my heart every day and every night as I watch him navigate the unimaginable. He has no idea how spectacular he is. Every time I or anyone else tries to tell him, he turns the compliment right back our way.

A few days ago, in the midst of a moment where he was experiencing some confusion I asked him quietly– “What do you really want the focus of your life to be?” Without missing a beat, the love of my lifetimes responded:

“To be in the flow of my deepest evolutionary process.”

***

Guri and Nipun are special partners on this unscripted journey with all its twists and turns. They have put so much on pause for months on end to support us through this, whatever this is with such generosity and care. Viral registers their presence in his own way. “Remember the story of how Nipun used to watch over you with eagle-eyes when you were a baby?” I ask him, “He’s doing the same thing for you now.” “I know,” says Viral, “I mean I don’t really ‘know,’ but I have a kind of sixth sense about it.” A few days ago Guri asks how he is feeling, “Obviously I feel very grateful for each of you, and for having the support to continue little by little. You recognize how it’s all so tenuous, that you can be like, “Yeah I feel strong and I can do this or that,” but really it’s all very tenuous. If I didn’t have the support I wouldn’t be able to do it.” How is your body feeling?” She asks, “It doesn’t feel great. But it feels supported. And I think that goes a long way.” Guri’s quiet, steadfast, multi-dimensional support goes a very long way.

Our parents, siblings, extended families and community of friends near and far are potent contributors too. We are sustained by so much more than what we can see. The blessings, the prayers, the goodwill, generosity, and thoughtfulness that surrounds us is legion. Viral alludes often to all the offerings we are receiving in this time. “This whole thing brings so much togetherness,” he says, “It’s a good life.”

It is special to see how deeply he feels the togetherness of it all. I feel it too, and bow to it. Without it I don’t think I would be able to breathe through this time. I would have been crushed a long time ago.

But I would be lying if I said I don’t also feel the separation.

***

Nipun, Guri and I are staying for the next few months, in a beautiful home that we were lucky to find, just fifteen minutes away from Stanford Hospital. We had assumed when we arranged for it, that it would be the four of us living there. So far I’ve only been at the house on alternate nights. The rest of my time is at the hospital with Viral. It is hard to tear myself away from his side. The garden at this home is rather magical — but I feel oddly immune to its charms, and unexcited about entering it. I think of this Rumi translation by Coleman Barks…

Come to the orchard in spring.
There is light and wine and sweethearts
in the pomegranate flowers.
If you do not come, these do not matter.
If you do come, these do not matter.

***

Pavi: You know how in Sufi poetry the Beloved and the Divine are addressed as one? I feel like I can somewhat understand what that means because to me, you are the beloved and you are my experience of the divine.  Do you know what I mean?

Viral: I don’t know that I know exactly, but  if I sense into it, there is something you feel in yourself and there is something that you feel in me. Taken to its ideal level, what you feel is infinite love.

I place my head on his shoulder and his arms immediately cradle me as they so often have. I sink into the depths of this wordless, formless, endless love, that is my home. For those moments time disappears. Everything feels complete.

Everything is complete.

***

I’ve always loved Viral’s voice. Its warm timbre, its articulate confidence, clarity and depth. That voice is muffled now, soft, halting and slurred. The muscles in his face and jaw are tremulous. Speaking takes significant effort. Some words come slowly, others never arrive. And yet there is an otherworldly eloquence too.

“The fire of goodness is the same in everyone,” he said a few days ago, “We’re all just doing the best we can.” And this afternoon he looked over at me and said, “It’s all a remarkable adventure.”

“Ultimately life is emerging in its own way. One never really knows what that means. Why do things emerge the way they do? How? When? And through whom? Through what partnerships and challenges? Ultimately it’s more and more mystery…But at another level one has to deal with a lot of the unknowns, and those can be painful and difficult things possibly. [How does one deal with that?] Through true conductivity and connectivity,” says Viral, “Everything else is a mystery.”