Ever so often this past week, I have been surveying the ruins of this year. I draw solace from my use of the word survey. It means that I have been able to prop myself up enough to at least see the decimation and attempt a tentative jab at the foundations to test the tensile and see what can be built back. 2015 was a battleground and I did not win. One might argue that wins and losses are relative terms and only time can determine what certain episodes can mean in the narrative of your life. I will accept that, but for the moment this is a very depleted me and I accept that, first.
Academia, research, and its processes, has a way of showing you your aukaat at regular intervals. It demands rigor and deep study. You then make intellectual claims of having understood something and you send of your work to be reviewed, commented on, and judged. You do this every time knowing that the stakes are high in terms of what the results will do to your confidence and how you think of yourself. Especially this year, when I have spent the better part of the year battling two bloody battles that had already left me wounded and diminished. I was also trying to swing two jobs and while it is always an honor to be asked to teach as a visiting faculty and shines your CV, it sapped every bit of me in trying to balance the responsibility of shepherding a class even though I enjoyed it.
So, I have been thinking a lot about ahankaar because that was at the crux of why things spiraled away. Isn’t it always? And because I believe that things happen for a reason, I do know that getting to watch Katyar Kaljat Ghusli yesterday, only means that I need to pay heed to, interpret, and translate what it is going to mean to me because it was the most important film I have watched this year. If you are unfamiliar with happenings in Marathi cinema, KKG, originally written and performed as a play, is a visual and aural treat – especially if you are a music lover of any persuasion. And if you are a Hindustani classical music lover, it is nothing short of a fiesta of epic proportions. Each song in the film is a finely crafted piece of work so much so that there is a move by UNESCO to draft KKG as an artefact of immense cultural heritage value. It made up for every Sawai Gandharva Mahotsav I have missed these past many years. Wah. As a film, it could have benefited from a little bit of curtailing because it begins to drag towards the end, but as a feat of music and cinema it moves you tremendously and this is Subodh Bhave’s directorial debut! Sanjay Leela Bhansali needs to watch this on priority to see how the rendition of a period piece can be rightly done. Critically though, you can question religious stereotypes because it does beget a bit of bigotry that is shown to be only partially redeemed.
Offline life, aside. I was also thinking about ahankaar with respect to this blog when I was watching the film. The statistics that WordPress has fed me this year are stunning. I notched a record number of posts this year. In fact the blogging of all my years combined are perhaps still less than the posts I wrote this year alone. I came to this space because it allowed me to feel okay about being me and though I was largely private about the hell that I was attempting to ford, my posts did come from a place of attempting to cope and normalize crises of self-doubt and confidence. I also experienced what it was to have readers.
I have been blogging since 2005, but it is only over the past year that I realized that I was writing to an audience. This combination of needing to cope and having readers was potent and encouraging, but not always pretty. I cringe at some of the things that I have written over the past few months and the amount of artifice in some of my posts and have told myself to stop. I recognize that impression management and performing are an integral part of any human interaction and online social interactions be it on Facebook or blogs, feed off on this in a huge way. I have no qualms with it and often wonder why Facebook gets such a bad rep about being exhibitionist because over a period of time, we really don’t behave any differently on any other platform. Our mediums of communication don’t change what we want to communicate about our SELVES in any drastic way though the structure and content of WHAT we are writing may differ. It is as it is and I am a part of it, but it has now started feeling like a burden given my own investment in this space and I feel like moderating it a little.
That said, this blog and receiving a response to what I was writing helped me weather some of the storm and since I am back to relatively calmer waters, I won’t be using this as my crutch anymore because lately it has stopped putting me in a happy place. I also discovered that having readers is not always a good thing even though I LOVE receiving comments. Some, I have enjoyed interacting with. Some, I sigh over. Some have dug deep through the archives leaving me unsettled with how much I have put out there for strangers to browse through and read. I don’t wish to withdraw anything and having done this myself with bloggers I like, I totally get that this is but normal behavior and can even be a compliment. Some, flattered to deceive and disappeared. I will admit that I was bewildered at this and wondered a fair amount about what I could have written or said that was so offensive. This sent me off on another round of self-doubt and I understood then that I really need to have more equanimity and balance in understanding why I write, what I choose to write, and for whose benefit this is all about. After all, nobody owes anybody anything and lest this be construed as passive aggressive, I am grateful that it pushed me to introspect.
I have always enjoy writing and find that it is the only constant and absolute thing of certainty about myself that I carry forward with me from this year. Everything else is shaken and stirred. I am thankful for this touchstone and really need to return to approaching it with honesty irrespective of having readers or who they are. It is integral to who I am and for something that I so deeply cherish, it deserves nothing less.
This is my X’Mas gift to myself. And if you are a music and cinema lover, Marathi cinema has this gift for you.
Heer toh badi sad hai 
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