Now.

(New Year wishes tradition. 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 here).

This year build moments of stillness.

Time, I’m told, is intent on taking us forward, notifications are intent on spinning us in circles inside our own head. Between these two, plant a flag with your face on its banner, stake claim to portions of your own day and build stillness and quiet.
If Enid Blyton books are to be believed, that’s when you can hear the fairies in the garden. Though, 

I’d even settle for the chirping of house sparrows and starlings at dawn.

This year, don’t believe

Statistics or trend reports of what’s in, definitions of millenials, Gen Zs and everything right, wrong and about to happen to  them. Don’t believe, subscribe or be defined by anything other than what your life’s work has been so far and what you want it to be from here on. Let all belief, definition and proof stem from the sweat and heat of your daily actions, let them move you towards the goofball, weird shaped, hip-swivelling, sometimes-twerking, sometimes- moody, joy infected life you wanted to create. 

QED.

This year chase magnificence, like you’re the ruler of your own kingdom.

(Spoiler alert: you are!)
We’re growing older, wearier, more tired and distracted every year. So this year, find and chase magnificence every day, in thought, word and action. Attack what you plan to do with the zeal and urgency of a superstar awaiting her next big release. From lying in bed doing nothing, to spending Sunday with your houseplants, to making your list of chores for the week, or just hanging out with your grandmother in the winter sun; do everything with the spirit of magnificence.

Oh and before you ask, magnificence can look like the Taj Mahal on some days and like the steady, calm drumming of your own heartbeat on another.


This year place yourself firmly in the middle of people.

Step outside of your own small locust of problems. Of unreturned texts, a syllabus that doesn’t make sense, parents who never understood you, a passion that refuses to be found and subsequently chased, a partner who doesn’t get what you never really say and old friends who keep changing into new, different people.

Step outside of the mountainous shadow of those concerns and study the world outside. Read the paper (the actual journalistic take not the bite-sized version on an app), then read a book about a region, political situation, tribe, animal on threat of extinction you find yourself caring about. Immerse yourself in the very real dangers of worlds outside of your own. 

It will make you better at dealing with yours and maybe you’ll find a way to save or make a difference to someone else’s.

This year, dance.

To the tune of your own, weird happy impulses. At least once a week. If you find a happy impulse lightly tickling the back of your throat, reminding you to not be chained to a must/should/have to, then follow that impulse down the street and hopefully it will lead you to someplace wonderfully new or someplace deliciously old, both of which you never would have discovered if you stayed on schedule or in bed.


This year, love
like some terrible Instagram poets want you to, like the old couple married for 55 years oblivious to rising divorce rates do, like the siblings ferociously protecting each other into adulthood or like everyone who will fall in love all over again this year will.
Love every way you know how to, then find new ways to better those ways and then love better. Do this over and over again with everyone you care about. 

This is what is known as the evolution of personhood and what a fantastic time to commit to it, like

the start of this year.


Happy new year.

                                                (Swinging into 2019. This is from one of my favourite memories of 2018)

To You, Divya and Gurdit

(Background: This letter request came to me from my friend, Divya. “I want you to write me a love letter on marriage. That can be your wedding gift to me. 

Oh and these are the dates for my wedding, and sending you the card”. 

This was the not so detailed brief I got and a few quick messages on the day of her mehendi on all the reasons she and Gurdit chose each other. So this one’s for you, my lovely, a letter and a case for marriage).


To you
Divya and Gurdit,


I don’t know what makes up a marriage. Perhaps, it is the sum of:


The years, the people occupying it, their secrets: both those they share and those they never do, a thousand irritating habits, nights of soft comfort, the feeling of having made your own family in a hyper-social world that can feel eerily strange each time you pick up or put your phone down. Familiarity, stillness and safe spaces (far sexier than a rush of newness). The plans for vacations, for building empires together, making schedules to meet relatives and friends, never actually being able to meet all the relatives and friends. Somewhere over the weekends of buying groceries and wondering which movie to not eventually watch becoming a team, a tribe, and most importantly loyal friends.


People from different  points of views will give you advice on marriage. From all that you should expect and why you shouldn't. Terribly sexist Whatsapp message memes, to whispers of “just compromise and adjust, that’s all”. You’ll be tempted to take their advice since you’ll assume that having lived through it they’d know better or know more. But, smile through it and remember that, like fingerprints, snowflakes and nature of fat cell deposits, there are no two marriages which are completely identical; a strength you should never forget. 

Your marriage doesn’t have to look, sound or behave like anyone but your own and you get to design it. Paint its walls a different colour every year, put a painting up or not, invite friends over, throw a rug to hide a hole in a couch and like any beautiful home fill it with love and above all laughter.


You told me in breathless texts that sometimes your quiet worry is how different you two are. 
How Gurdit would prefer to stay home on a lazy Sunday, plan out his week and share quiet silences and music with you, while like a whirling dervish you’d love to go out into the sun, meet friends and make up new plans every day. How wonderful that Gurdit’s quiet and your ecstasy will get a chance to find places of rest and expression in each other! I’d take that over similarity, any day.


The making of a family seems to me like making art. 
You’re not going to start with a finished Monet landscape of water lilies that millions can admire, immediately. You’re going to find frustration and paint all over your hands and clothes, times when the big picture doesn’t seem to come together and days when you’ll wonder looking at a splotchy, purple, unfinished canvas why you took on this project anyway?

Because, maybe all the books, songs and art is right: love really is the best kind of magic there is to living.


I don’t know the insides of a marriage, or the sometimes tough times all of us will inevitably face, but the promise of a partner seeing you through the routine, everyday, non-Instagram worthy moments is what this adventure seems to be all about.

Someone to document, sometimes record and never fail to remind you of the different pitch and bass undertones to your snoring, the person most likely to wake up and pass you a glass of water at 2am, hold your head when you suffer from a street food induced poisoning, whose voice on the days you choose to pay attention will still make you weak in the knees when all he would’ve said is “pass the remote?”. Someone who will bear witness to useless pro-con lists of all the decisions you take, try their best to support what they think (to themselves) are clearly idiotic decisions, most times call you out on them, watch you  shed skin off old habits and remake yourself into all the new people you’re going to be.


And somewhere along the way, that Monet landscape will come together and you’d have made art, kid.


Congratulations, Divya and Gurdit, do this your way and do it in style.


All my love,
Kakul

(Divya and Gurdit, the first time they met)

(At their engagement)

(To You is a letter writing project I started because there are not enough letters and love going around. If you have something to say with love-- for your ex girlfriend, you current husband, pizza (promise not to make it cheesy), your landlord who let you skip rent or even Ryan Gosling-- I'll write that letter for you. The love letter can go with real names, back stories, as many pictures as you like, aliases and even super powers.
The final letter will be up on my blog and a copy will be handwritten and posted to you or to an intended recipient. Kisses on the envelope only on my discretion. Give me a shout at: kakulgautam@gmail.com or on my Instagram account @hyperbolemuch)

To You, Ayeshu

(Background: This love letter comes with a side serving of an apology for how long it took. A mother wanted me to write a love letter for her daughter, Ayesha, as a first birthday present. After an email and speaking to her for half an hour, I struggled with representing a feeling I didn't know of myself. So here it is, "amma", a love letter from you to Ayesha, I hope I've done this justice. Happy birthday, may every year feel like new magic and old love).

Dear Ayeshu,


The making of a person is a great many things.

But first comes the making of the two parents. Their zig-zagged journey of becomings, unbecomings, coming together and navigating life until they’re ready to make space for a new one. Your father and I finding each other, in this mixed up world, and building our home together felt like it’s own special miracle to me. Our love felt so incredible and complete that I wasn’t sure there was room in our world for any more. That is until you came along.


I don’t remember when you became a part of me, maybe it was that hot evening your father and I had just eaten gol gappas at Om Sweets and I felt a wave pass through me, like a tiny fish swimming home tired after a long day. Or one of the many, many visits to our doctor where I’d ensure that I saw the scans over and over again to make sure every toe was exactly where it belonged. You were building yourself inside me, kunju kutty, verterbra by verterbra and all I wanted was to give you the best first home you’d ever know.


I wish I could tell you the specific moment you became a part of us but something feels like you’ve been here all along, in ways neither me nor your father can ever understand. You’re made of an old school love, romance and a friendship a decade deep that I wonder sometimes, if that’s where you get your personality from. 
I know you get your big, beautiful eyes, your dimples which flicker like stars each time you laugh, and your voice from me, but the way you love and trust so completely is magic I didn’t know of before. 
Do you know that you also inherit the thickness and heart of four languages (English, Hindi, Marathi and Tamil)? When I scold you softly, or when I hold you against my heart to feed you, I whisper to you only in Tamil, “kunju kutty”, ,my “ammu kutty”, like my mother used to talk to me. Is this why they call it mother tongue? 
In your flesh, I find myself remembering and being my mother. 
Are you teaching me soft lessons on memory, legacies and roots, my little girl?



Because this year, I’ve learnt so much from you. 
How before any fancy corporate title, I will always be Chief Worrier of anything that can happen to you. I will successfully imagine, dismantle and preemptively take action against a thousand things that can go wrong, when you’ve only so much as rolled over on your back. You’ve taught me that reason you’re called my “flesh and blood”, is because every time you’ve fallen sick and not been eating, I’ve watched my own heart sink and my appetite curl up in a foetal position refusing to get up.



You’ve taught me that I cannot plan everything. Don’t get me wrong, kid, I will still continue to, but with you I know that along the way I’ll learn how to give up control and just laugh along, because look there’s a bird in the sky and that’s all that’s deserving of our immediate attention at this moment. 

I’m watching you become a little person. I see shadows of moods cross your face. I see hints of edges of your father and me and I see already, all the things we will talk about when you’re talking to us. 
I have a list Ayeshu, and I know it will not hold a candle to the wonder and world of questions you’ll bring to us.


You’ve taught me that my one year old precious girl can be the master of appearances. Strangers stopped us after your first birthday at Tirupati, to comment on how calm and well behaved you were. Baby girl, do you specially reserve this peaceful calm for strangers and all your beautiful storms for amma?


More than anything else, Ayeshu, you’re teaching me how to renegotiate, navigate, learn and unlearn contours of love and life. I’m learning with you, how to love differently, insistently and more permanently: myself, your amazing father, our life together and you.



Happy first birthday.



All my love,

Amma

                                            (This is Ayesha, in "Amma's" belly)

(To You is a letter writing project I started because there are not enough letters and love going around. If you have something to say with love-- for your ex girlfriend, you current husband, pizza (promise not to make it cheesy), your landlord who let you skip rent or even Ryan Gosling-- I'll write that letter for you. The love letter can go with real names, back stories, as many pictures as you like, aliases and even super powers.
The final letter will be up on my blog and a copy will be handwritten and posted to you or to an intended recipient. Kisses on the envelope only on my discretion. Give me a shout at: kakulgautam@gmail.com or on my Instagram account @hyperbolemuch)

Kaainaat ~Stories From Urdu

Kaainaat
(Urdu; Universe)

Moving inside me at break neck speed are dreams, questions, plans, memories and a clock ticking fast to the end.
Moving inside a house sparrow are the same things.

The rush of the ocean.
The memory of a minute ago still suspended mid-air.
A constant ache for light.

Moving inside and moving away from both of us.

What else is the Universe?

~hyperbolemuch.blogspot.com (Full video here. Find me on Instagram at @hyperbolemuch, where I write more often and regularly)