On the last day of this year, I was considering doing one of those end-of-year roundups, but then it struck me that if you’ve been reading this newsletter, you already know about some of the art, films, books, and poems that have fascinated me in 2021. Besides, there are several such roundups actually doing the rounds, quite lovely ones too.
It only feels like yesterday, trying to remember to write ‘2021’ instead of 2020 in correspondence and official documents. I am floating on all the excitement around new possibilities, and the surge to forget the disappointments of the year gone by. I’m not one for resolutions, but I like to mark moments, to leave them with the legacy of a story. In this, I am a sucker for ritual, and ceremony. It is important, I believe, to celebrate, and to take stock, even without reason. So I tried to write down a few things I learnt in the last year, a few reminders to myself - things that I should try to understand better in the year to come. I thank Rohini, of the alipore post, for inviting me to be a part of her year-end 2021 time capsule series, perhaps this is where this post began, and this letter to myself.
Lo tum bhi dekh lo
makes sense?
The title is a Shakespearean reference, borrowed from Polonius giving advice to Laertes in Hamlet. It’s one of my favourite plays. But if that is not quite your kind of thing, watch Vishal Bharadwaj’s Haider, then watch some other Hamlet adaptation with the original Shakespearean lines, just for fun. Anyway where was I?
Yes, the surge. It has been one hasn’t it. Think of overflowing cups that cannot be emptied (zen metaphor), think of cracks in cups that are mended with gold (another zen metaphor more clickbaity, though), think of that wave -
It has been quite overwhelming hasn’t it? There is so much to hold, so much joy, so much sorrow, so many (extra)ordinary things that have happened in this last year of distant intimacy that I could not quite think of what to share today, so I went back to a song that I listen to every morning, a song that is like an alarm clock for me now, only better. because it wakes me up, and holds me and comforts me and tells me everything will be all right, (and if everything’s already all right) that it will stay that way, until the music stops.
(That is another thing I realised - the music never stops. If anything we forget to listen)
Since I first heard the song I wanted to understand it properly (I have been trying - unsuccessfully- to learn Malayalam through Malayalam songs with a friend) and then listen to it again. So I sat with my mallu friend (Mallu friends are the best btw, dilfek) and she brought in her mother and her aunt on this project to translate the elusive, somewhat literary Malayalam of Cherathukal. So, with gratitude to Susan Koshy, Valsa Koshy Panicker, and Susan George Koshy here is an attempted translation for this song. I have taken some creative license in the final rendition, but tried my best to stay true to its spirit.
Do you get it now? why I share this song today?
Happy New Year friends, I love you all very much, simply because you read this newsletter :)
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