I did linger on the idea of changing the index of these emails; thought of calling them S2 - 00X. But these letters to you from me will be a continuum. And though things come back to where they start with the world always, we move ahead as if not.
This is Bombay Daak. We talk of reading and seeing, on occasions we go off on a different tangent. This is what I wrote to you last.
Reading
It wasn't just the name of each letter that I reconsidered during the season's break. I thought of how this newsletter can be different from last time. There should be a sign of evolution, right, of growth and change?
I don't have an answer yet. Consider this a work in progress, a belated onset of newsletter adolescence in the late twenties.
Change, after all, cuts both ways. I may wish to tell you certain things in a certain manner, but you are indifferent to that. You and I we read our own separate lives in these words. The question that remains then I this, how much time are you giving yourself, that is to say how much are you reading?
I read an essay that was an introduction by Jenny Offill1 to a new edition of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. I am afraid of reading books by Woolf2. I am afraid I might suffer from her mental breakdowns as if it is contagious (I suspect I believe words are contagious). I read more about Virginia Woolf’s works than her works thus. It is an awkward ridge to walk on, but on occasions it leads to a rich reading like Offill’s essay.
It starts with Woolf’s own words on reading:
To write down one’s impressions of Hamlet as one reads it year after year, would be virtually to record one’s own autobiography, for as we know more of life, so Shakespeare comments upon what we know.
*
Running
The heat here is throbbing at the veins. I look past this night and peer into tomorrow. I see it as if from memory. As if I have lived it already. It is cooler there.
Tomorrow it will be a year since I last ran. It was a morning ritual cultivated over a year and a half. At first I went to the parks, then I began heading to the beach. I suppose it was my excuse to see the beach as much as it was to run every other day. I say so because I have missed the sea more than my run.
The news of the flu was already gaining steam then. The flu itself had entered silently and spread faster and was no longer just a flu. The city’s first official cases won’t be detected till the 11th of March. Two Pune in people had already tested positive. The two in Andheri, the first recorded cases, were part of the same group as them. Heading for that run was a mistake in the light of these news that followed. My personal lockdown began that day.
I was hoping it would last just the month of March.
Interlude
The hardest thing over the first few weeks of locking oneself down was the fuss over food. I mean, I love Pizzas. That was hard. But after sometime the need just went away.
It wasn’t until late December when I read this essay on the deep fried snacks of Calcutta and Panjim that a craving came back. I missed traveling and eating at some strange place. Maybe it was the air of Calcutta that seeped in to my mind, but I remembered my eating breaks in Sikkim. At obscure places that I don’t recollect the names of. All of them served a Potato dish with Dal and Rice. And all the potatoes everywhere were sliced the same. My friend reckoned the whole of Sikkim gets its food from the same kitchen.
*
This cafe shall remain nameless
The unnamed restaurant beside the shuttered tours and travel operator, is a place where the local folks gather for their evening tea, away from the bustle Gangtok’s main square. I sit down for a tea, although I don’t drink tea. It is only my second day here, I am not sure if it is safe to eat. An elderly gentleman saunters in. There are only two tables inside, he sits on mine. We don’t speak. A minute later the lady arrives with a glass of black tea in hand. They don’t speak either. He removes a bottle tucked between his waist and his trouser. Pours more of his arrack into the glass than there is tea; he drinks it quietly. I am but a feet away, in front of him. Our eyes yet don’t meet.
There is a rush in my head. I want to head back, and walk on the sandy face of my city.
The news isn’t great though. The numbers are on the rise. The last run last year was a mistake, another tomorrow appears foolish. But I want to get on with it. I tell myself that this is what I told myself last year.
I am looking at tomorrow to see what I do. To remain at home or go run along side the sea both happen to be in the interest of survival. The body and the mind have different eyes.
In our heads, everything bad happens elsewhere. Perhaps it is that spirit that gets us to survive. In our heads, it is the body that has to wither and suffer, the mind survives.
*
Surviving
Like many businesses in Japan, her family’s shop, Ichiwa, takes the long view — albeit longer than most. By putting tradition and stability over profit and growth, Ichiwa has weathered wars, plagues, natural disasters, and the rise and fall of empires. Through it all, its rice flour cakes have remained the same.
Naomi Hasegawa’s family sells toasted mochi out of a small, cedar-timbered shop next to a rambling old shrine in Kyoto. The shop is 1020 years old.
There are over a 140 businesses in Japan that are over 500 years old.
For Ichiwa to survive meant to stay. Like runners on the track, turn after turn. Avoid distractions, stay put, do one thing well.
No End in Sight
Three months back on the 7th of December I finally visited the beach. Today on the 7th of March, I read Ranjit Hoskote.
The Earth here is glass, the wind the sting of a thousand wasps,
Whoever is driven north wishes he could burn in the fires of hell.
On this sea without horizons we do not sail by the magnet.
Of wisdom, the deep says, ‘It is not in me.’
- Risk, from Hoskote’s Jonahwhale
Jenny Offill’s latest book is called Weather. And as I stare at potentially the hottest March in my memory, it seems relevant
The title and subtitle of this letter comes from Virginia Woolf