Thankful to be of southern color – TGP Musing 14

The Gratitude Project – Musing 14

I despise being born with the unearned benefits of manhood, just as I’m grateful that I was born of color in this world.

I despise being born with the unearned benefits of a privileged social class, just as I’m grateful that I emerged out of a brutalized global south.

For my two great loves and I have looked deep into the heart of white privilege and western civilization…

And all we ever seem to find is soullessness.

Occasionally glittery, often pathetic, always destructive.

*sigh*

When, oh, when will our gora brothers and sisters liberate themselves from the soullessness of white privilege they cling onto with such fearful entitlement?

When, oh, when will we of the privileged West, liberate ourselves from the soullessness of endless greed and perennial discontentment?

When, oh, when will I stop lamenting about the state of the world and just be grateful that I have love in my life?

(Not much chance of any of these happening in the near future.)

I’m grateful for memories beyond memories…and a daughter who schools me (TGP Musing 13)

The Gratitude Project – Musing 13

I have a weird involuntary quirk where I grit my teeth playfully whenever I feel overwhelmed with love and affection. Especially for those pure and high souls that are kittens, puppies and babies.

It’s not unlike the whole cutesy-macabre phrase of “Oh, you’re so adorable I could just eat you!” kind of thing.

It’s strange, you know, this gritting of teeth – often interpreted in masculine ways as a reflex of combative anger or grim determination; certainly not the flush of goodness that courses through one’s veins when in love.

Why then do I do it? I have always wondered, from a rather young age.

As a career healer, I understood the involuntary gritting of one’s teeth as a tick that can come from trauma. I know that reflex well. But it’s not the same. Any residual pain from past hurt that travels to my jaw results in a gnashing of the teeth for me, usually accompanied by a feeling like my head’s gonna explode.

I haven’t felt that in quite a while, and even when I do, it’s so short lived that it passes with nary a flutter.

This gritting of teeth, the one that comes from overwhelming love, is different and something I have witnessed in others.

But I only got a deeper understanding of it after my glorious daughter started mimicking it  recently. She playfully grits her teeth now from time to time when she feels a flood of love for either of her parents.

And in doing so, as usual, she teaches me more than I can ever teach her.

For Daya has helped unearth in me the faintest of memories, likely ingrained far deeper than my cognitive brain could ever retrieve. So faint that it necessitated multiple sensory flashbacks to retrieve.

A memory of me being held by my mother, hearing Amma’s banter as she coos in baby talk to me, sensing her playfully grit her teeth as she expresses that overwhelming feeling love.

I get it now.

And I’m so very grateful for memories beyond memories, traversing lifetimes and universes, gently proving that love is indeed pretty goddamn eternal.

I’m grateful for the Indian women’s cricket team (TGP Musing 12.5)

The Gratitude Project – Musing 12.5

For paving the way…

For fighting the good fight with all thy might…

For helping shift the cultural paradigm in the subcontinent and elsewhere ever closer towards true gender equality…

Indeed, in the midst of patriarchy’s global and let’s face it, decidedly small-handed, last stand…

I am grateful for the formidable fighters of the Indian women’s cricket team that grace us with their great skill and athleticism in romping through to the final of the World Cup.

Hail the subcontinent’s great warriors as they have taken down, not one, not two, but three favorites en route to a thrilling journey to the final.

England. New Zealand. The mighty Aussies even.

All fell to the chaotic grace and mad brilliance that is my new favorite team of all time.

Win or lose this final, (and on behalf of my warrior daughter who at 16 months shows the raw athleticism of an Olympic decathlete) thank you, thank you, and a million times forever more, thank you…

I am grateful for the eventual return of our matriarchy (TGP Musing 12)

 

The Gratitude Project – Musing 12

It is time, it is time.

Ten thousand years or more is long enough.

Somewhere at the cusp of many millennia of hunter-gatherer matriarchies.

Just prior to the dawn of global agriculture.

(And we all know the shit-storm of patriarchal religion, civilization, and colonialism that came after…)

Perhaps there existed a pinnacle of humanity when we had it all:

The security of pastoralism.

The freedom of hunting.

But above all,

The nurturing soul of a society guided and led by matriarchs.

It feels like we might be getting there again, albeit via upheaval.

As the Great Warrior Poet, Arundhati Roy, once said:

“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”

I am grateful for the voices of great souls like her during troubled times like this when global misogyny and masculinity seems to be making its last, cowardly stand.

As I am, grateful that is, for the great souls that are Sus and Daya (less famous though they may be for now) who guide me at home.

But right now, in a flush of spiritual candor and belief, I am truly grateful for what I know is going to be the return of our matriarchy.

The same matriarchy that has saved humanity’s ass for damn near it’s entire fucking existence.

And will do so yet again.

Never-ending gratitude for the moxie of warrior-goddesses (TGP Musing 11.75)

The Gratitude Project (Musing 11.75)

I’m ever grateful for the courage, the resiliency, oh what the heck, the moxie of Sus and Daya (and other great souls who will join our family in the years to come);

Ever-shining lights of liberation they are and will continue to be for humanity’s great leap forward to our matriarchal roots;

As well as our great revolution back to a gender-liberated future;

Moxie we will need to take us there.

And moxie we will need to keep us from regressing.

I’m going to stop saying the word moxie now, as it’s starting to feel a little contrived.

(Which is a good indicator to end this musing…cos the moxie of them warrior-goddesses is anything but contrived.)

***

via Daily Prompt: Moxie

(Why else would I arbitrarily use the word this many times in a musing? Check out other posts written via the daily prompt by clicking the below link.)

Moxie

The beauty of a transnational accent to life (TGP Musing 11.5)

The Gratitude Project – Musing 11.5

I adore my transnational accent, beyond just my deeply rich, multilingual, and multicultural tongue.

I am grateful for the increasingly diverse accents and flavors influencing my life and loves in a myriad different ways.

Sus teaches me that egalitarianism, true human solidarity, indeed our very survival as a species, can only exist with a faithful embrace of diversity, difference, and that quintessential human essence that needs both social cooperation and individual creativity.

She teaches me by living it daily.

Thus I’m grateful we’re able to provide worlds and views to our daughter that are anything but insular.

I’m grateful Daya will always grow up in a liberated, multilingual household (it seems to already be working in enhancing her honking brain – scary that she already seems smarter than I ever will be.)

And I’m grateful, always, for the richness of our collective humanity.

It’s not just languages or cultures that I speak about, though they are so very crucial.

It’s a powerfully diverse accent to life itself that carries us through the increasing uncertainty and fearful hatred that’s taken over the geopolitical world around us.

For we are the warrior-healers of tomorrow and the builders of solidarity today.

And we fear no evil.

An ego that sees all of me (TGP Musing 11)

The Gratitude Project – Musing 11

I am grateful for self-correction and self-critique, for I need so very much of both.

Far be it for me to be awash in humility, false or otherwise…

My ego is large enough to see all of the very worst of me with acute focus.

(I’m glad I love myself enough to not be my worst enemy – I would provide some serious ammo to said antagonist.)

I am grateful for the Bangalore I lost (TGP Musing 10)

The Gratitude Project – Musing 10

I recently chanced upon an image that ripped my heart to shreds. It showed, with unforgiving graphics, what I already knew to be true but refused to fully believe – the utter destruction of Bangalore’s all-covering green space to make way for the predatory concrete jungle that is McTrumpaluru today.

Here, drink it in:

If the picture made it’s way across the bits and bytes of the interwebs to your screen alright…well, it just about conveys the trauma of losing your childhood home, filled with fresh air, greenery, and historically welcoming communities – to cold blooded profit and reverse-engineered jingoism.

What am I grateful for, perhaps you ask?

Well, I’m still grateful for the Bangalore of my childhood – a safer place then than it is today for women, minorities, children, and our natural fucking world that provides us oxygen.

I’m grateful for my Bangalore – a more peaceable city, bursting with foliage and chaotic beauty – seemingly from a different age.

A Bangalore consigned to times past.

A Bangalore where one breathed easy in more ways than one.