Category: PhD, Environmental Communication

Deep learning for deep healing

July 14th, 2022
I had been planning to buy an apartment which was disabled friendly, one in which my brother could move around in his wheel chair, and feel independent and happy.

I had also been to the Disability Commissioner in New Delhi to petition for my brother’s case. So I worked hard, did extra work for extra income, kept up a straight face despite marital discord and smiled a lot in general. The little girl who was growing up to become an adult was my prime motivation.

Then, it came to me, as a bolt from the blue, my brother is no more! ‘Why??? I knew I could take care of you. I was getting there, I told to myself angrily, why did you have to leave like that???’

But those were just thoughts, my parents were heart broken, as the single earning member, I had no time to grieve. I rushed back to work and work did help, so did the students whose sweet good mornings always cheered me up.

But the pain was excruciating, the feeling of guilt was huge, the disappointment of not being able to be the elder sister I wanted to be was unrelenting, and I wept myself to sleep so many days after.

Work and more work was good to keep the interest in living but then I came across a course from EFLU or English and Foreign Languages University, an online course. I immediately registered for the course, the sheer number of assignments was daunting, yet I knew it was the right medicine to heal my heart.

Soon after, the freshly minted text books arrived, looking rather frail and dainty but heavy on content. Days of reading and making notes followed. As I submitted my assignments, my joy grew many times over. I was already back on track, I sensed an enthusiasm for life in my guts and breathed easy.

When the evaluated sheets came back, I felt overjoyed at the results, they looked good. This positivity that came from learning radiated in the house too. My daughter and I spent some fun times together and I was not giving into the temptation to ask some very pertinent questions to the man and his mother…

I was able to let things go and focus on myself and building a better future for my daughter.

‘You are like a man’, said my husband taunting me, and I looked at him with disinterest. The taunts were not getting to me now. I had noticed that it has been sometime since I smiled happily. I saw that I was unsure of myself in many ways. I saw the anomaly in the taunt that ‘you don’t know to stand up for yourself’ at office versus the silence forced on me at home. I had too much to reflect upon.

I knew I had to be strong for what was coming ahead. I knew my brother’s passing away was a wake up call for me. I had a few people to whom I felt indebted and it was not possible to sit and cry.

I must say that studying has always helped me, to keep my mind clear of negativity, to stay in a bubble of joy despite what was going around, or at least to get back to my cheerful self.

Later, when I registered for PhD, it was the same thought that motivated me, books are great, reading, the best, writing, the exact medicine to overcome hurt or pain, and I immersed myself into the process of learning once again.

As I type out my thesis, I am in a state of exhilaration, a sense of great satisfaction is overwhelming me and I am regaining my ‘devil may care’ attitude.

And I am reminded of Dr. Faustus who traded his soul to Mephistopheles to learn necromancy, that is one work of literature, that I always found deeply interesting. Do I see my soul brother in Dr. Faustus? May be ,maybe not!

And the beloved Ulysses who could travel endlessly to quench his thirst for knowledge….

‘To follow knowledge like a sinking star….’

‘To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

“I am a part of all that I have met;

Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’

Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades

For ever and forever when I move.

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,

To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!” – Ullysses by Tennyson

“So, break my heart,

break as many times as you may

for I find refuge in the books of the world

or in stories waiting to be told

for which hopefully I am the conduit

and the words, let them flow, let them flow…..
- Sreelekha
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Thathastu to Thesis

September 27th, 2021
How often is writing the observing of the observed and the observer? I wonder about the process and now the tumult that is in my head as I am trying to make sense of my research and getting to start to write my thesis.

I have been fence sitting to be honest, going around in circles of a task that is incumbent upon me. It is like I am always thinking about writing but not writing.

It sure worries my guide, and I see that in her.

It sure worries me too, yet I stand and watch how the process unfolds to get me to the stage of putting it out on paper.

A task so humungous that I am surprised I have come this far. A subject so dear that as I go about talking and reading I am caught deeper in its whirlpool and seem to meander about clueless of where I am heading.

It has been frightening, as if this last leg of the journey rather than being exciting, has been intimidating to me, scaring me of something I am not very sure of.

And the incessant call of the stories swimming around in the air I breathe, asking me to listen, just listen and speak, as if there are myriad souls wanting to find an intermediary, a voice, but am I good enough for that? And the work of course, with multiple excels that need submission almost on hourly basis, and my fear of anything numerical compounding my worries to no end.

I feel tossed and turned like a pendulum swinging against extremes, trying to hold my stance, worried, yet somewhere a feeling of satisfaction creeps in, as if the process painful as it is is also one of deep joy, that I should have the comfort of worrying about writing and not perhaps putting food on the table, that’s is a state of achievement in itself. A feeling that the worst is behind me keeps the smile stitched on the face.

Knowing the paths that have led me this far, I know of the learnings that have stood me in good stead and the friends that I have found on the way, and if death had to stop by and call, I would say happily, come, let’s go, I have done my part though of course, I could do more. Which of us can’t or won’t want to do more.

I seek the comfort of knowing that the the universe, sits by my side and eggs me to complete the learning process that I started before I jump headlong into the next.

I seek the presence of a soul for whom my learning was a ticket to a better life, though he chose a different path and left too early to another home, perhaps a better one, and gave me enough fodder to keep learning forever.

I look at my parents for whom my efforts at learning is a validation, being taunted for not learning enough in life, and living in a certain shame, which try as I do, they cannot seem to overcome, ‘after all we didn’t study beyond 10 th std’ is now replaced with amma’s constant crib, ‘if only I had the opportunity to learn’! to which I have no answer.

I look at her wilful spirit that recites a poem now and then, that learns sanskrit shlokas and talks with pride of the book I brought out and I have to smile, living as I do carrying the dreams of two in one life, that of my brother and mine, and sometimes tiring out in the labour of it all, yet finding strength as if from above.

I look at my daughter for whom it is ‘important to see you happy, ma and I know you can do it’.

So long, to my PhD Thesis writing, I bow and seek blessings from the universe and somehow deep down know that she says, ‘thathastu’.
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Category: PhD, Environmental Communication

Deep learning for deep healing

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Thathastu to Thesis

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