This is a column about things too sacrosanct to write about, but which deserve sharing. About spoken silences. About synecdoches: how smallness can contain splendour. About how your long covenant with your work encountered the best chemistry you have with the world, and they embraced one another — just as you do these people who you knew were friends even before you met them. About opening your palms later to enjoy how the deep inner magic of a few days has left them glittery. How long will you hold onto this for?
This is a column about women talking to each other. This is a column about women being quiet with each other. This is a column about women reading each others’ minds only so as to have each others’ backs. This is a column about sheer excess, because what the heart communes with another’s heart rarely requires the formality of words. This is a column about something people call sisterhood, but that’s an illusory word. Someone says “coven”.
Someone else says “solidarity”. This is a column about all that, then. About people meeting for the first time who seem to other eyes to have known each other forever, who share confidences as though they aren’t revelations. And about people who meet after half a lifetime but exchange notes from their journeys as though they’d never diverged. About old friends anew, and new friends already familiar.
About gratitude. About how life gives you only limited chances to see what you really do in the world, but if you’re lucky you’ll see lessons even in the laurels. About knowing better than to mistake glitter for gold, but learning also to love glitter for what it is, and cherish gold for what it’s worth. About grace. About growing deeper. About mirrors. About how what you see is based on who you are. About inner beauty and how every butterfly carries the memory of how it dreamed its wings in the dark of its cocoon.
About amazement. About sitting on the stairs surrounded by wine glasses and the scent of recently-sprayed Volini, talking about chronic illnesses. About shaking it off.
About someone bringing your forgotten bra to you in a brocade pouch one evening and then you draping your shawl over someone else’s shoulders so that she can take hers off at the lunch table two days later.
About gestures. About statements. About synchronicities. About how you packed a box of tea for someone you thought you’d meet, but don’t, then coincidentally catch her at breakfast before her flight. About how you, sleepy and unwashed, thank her for her defiance, for it was the very stuff that transformed an uncomfortable handshake into a warm hug.
A column, then, about many warm hugs. With those you recognise as kindred, even if only for some time as you amble on parallel paths. And with those in whose eyes you see the fear of unbelonging. To them you want to say: I was once you. I still know that me. Come into this garden of mine, this garden of forgiveness and myrhh, resilience and rosewater, for it has room for us all.
(The Chennai-based author writes poetry, fiction and more)