A Few handpicked Letters #8

Looking Within | Finding Beaches, Poems & Yourself

Dear Reader,

The summer has kicked in. I am writing to you from my home in Kochi. April here seems like a humid oven. So much so that, by the time it is midday, I can feel the hot air circulated by the fan, swirl around me. I am sweaty, sticky and cannot focus for the life of me. So I tell myself that if I soldier through, soon it will be monsoons, and Kerala would dance in shades of lush green. That gives me hope; the cool breeze right before the rains, the smell of the Earth and the song of the rain growing on you, as it gallops in from afar, drenching everything around you in huge, cold droplets of cloud water.

April is also the Global Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo/GloPoWriMo). I wrote poems on all but 3 days so far. I discovered some beautiful poets and new ways of writing poetry. Did you know that there was something called a Recipe poem? Yes! And I tried writing one. Now, I know that not all of you are into poetry, but I found a poem by Ha Jin that helped me ground myself and I wanted to share it with you all. It is a simple one. Think of it as a prose, or a letter to you and read it.

A CENTER BY HA JIN

You must hold your quiet center, where you do what only you can do. If others call you a maniac or a fool, just let them wag their tongues.  If some praise your perseverance,  don't feel too happy about it —only solitude is a lasting friend.

You must hold your distant center. Don't move even if earth and heaven quake.  If others think you are insignificant, that's because you haven't held on long enough. As long as you stay put year after year, eventually you will find a world beginning to revolve around you. 

With each passing day, it is becoming increasingly apparent that you can be an original and real version of you, only if you check in with yourself frequently. There are things we copy from people around us, and while we think that makes us happy, we may not know until we check in with ourselves. Sometimes we mistake others approval for our happiness and it ends up becoming a habit.

There are things we want to do, adding our own twists to them and there is a deep seated fear of how we would be perceived if we do it our way. You can figure out your ways of perceiving life, living and experimenting, and people are going to think that you are making a mistake, that you are being stupid, that you are not enough, that you have to confirm to the societal norms. But even as they point a hundred fingers at you, ask yourself why you did it this way, what do you believe in, and if you like the answer, simply continue. In the worst case scenario, it won’t work. But you would have learnt what to do and what not to do, during that experience. Even better, if you enjoyed the experience, isn’t that what life is all about?

Hold your center. As the Author Janice Pariat put it in her Instagram post where I found this poem first, Your Center is You! If you have not read her writings, you should. Her thoughts and writings can touch you in a way nothing else can.

Did I bore you with the lecture? I hope not. I find tidbits like these valuable and motivating. And I am passing them on, hoping they would help someone else.

Now moving on, I did something exciting last week!

When I decided to move back to Kochi, I promised myself that I would visit the beach more frequently and explore the city a little more. But it had been 3 months since I moved and I had forgotten about this promise. So last week, I went to a beach. I didn’t want to go to any of the regular beaches. I scoured the map for a beach closer to home and found Elamkunnapuzha beach. I did zero research, took my two wheeler, put on my headphones and followed the map. I had a ball of a time riding through the country side. The streets became narrower as I moved closer to the beach and the greenery on both sides increased. At one point, there was water on both sides of the road, barely any people around and I just wanted to sit on the side of the street watching the view.

I parked my two wheeler where the Google maps ended its navigation, walked over a gap in the wall made of rocks and there it was! A panorama of a calm, clean, secluded beach. I don’t think it is much of a secret amongst people from Vypin, but not many from the city side know of it. I walked along the beach for some time, journaled a bit, got some videos and meditated. After the sunset, I had some tea at the stall nearby and got back home. There was a special joy that came with discovering a new place, spending some me time there and experiencing travel vibes in my own home town. Perhaps, I need to do more of this. Experiments, discoveries, leaps of faith.

Perhaps I must hold my quiet center, where I do what only I can do.

Sunset at Elamkunnapuzha beach

Though I have a lot more stories to tell you, I will not make this any lengthier. I hope by the time you read till here, you feel a little calmer or a little more purposeful about your day. Here are the resources I would like to leave you with, at the end of my letter:

1. The Beautiful Poem A Center that I shared, that you may note down in your journal if it added value. For me, it did.

2. My two bits on applying the poem to our lives; looking inward.

3. My experiment with finding a new beach in Kochi and a video of it.

4. Here is a song I found on Instagram. It is not an officially recorded one, but made by two interns at Furnace Prayer rooms. I loved everything about it; the musicians, the vibe, the music, the lyrics. I heard it so many times that I had to share it here

I wish you peace, calm and growth for the remainder of April. If you like my letters, do share it with your friends. Remember! This is more of a letter than just an article. Which means you can write back to me.

Sending lots of hugs to last you until my next letter,

Ranjini S