I feel strangely at home here in Bandra. My Son asked me yesterday as we were returning home, is it about completing a circle for you, this connection with Bandra? It was strange question but my immediate answer was yes. I felt as if I have been in an Exile. And now re-turning.
My grandmothers family owned a home here, which was then given in faith to someone when she moved to look after the church. And then it was gone.
Places live inside of us more than we live inside places. The history of this place lives inside me. Like they say, you can take a person away from a place, but you can never take a place out of a person. It enters the nooks and crannies and crevices of the body and psyche. It builds the place that we refer to as “Home”. It’s a place inside – which can happen to be the place outside – if we are lucky. So much so, I have after years of drifting found that my souls calling is to be a Bridge. I wonder if it has connection to Bandra in Konkani loosely means port or bridge – It may be a long stretch but still
The history of the place is the Genesis story of our becoming.
I remember growing up we had a huge garden, and then we also had a separate part of banana plantation. Banana needs different kind of soil and so it had to be separate. My grandma, who was also a nurse, once, told took me to “camp” in this plantation, I was in class 1, we both has school and work respectively next morning and yet, she would do a makeshift bed amidst the plants. We were waiting for something. But I did not know what.
For three days nothing happened. On day four middle of the cold night, I woke up to a strange creaking sound. My grandma was up and watching the Banana bud. The front of the large red bud was moving and cracking open and from inside a bunch of baby bananas were slowing coming out. We were watching the Birth of Bananas. Apparently the mother tree is quite shy of this process and does not give birth in the day in front of people. We had to make sure she was comfortable. It was one of the MOST beautiful sacred sights in my entire life. Witnessing Bananas being born.
That night and that incident changed me in some fundamental way. I have witnessed this only twice in my entire life. But this, this desire, thirst for witnessing the unseen come into the seen world is a large part of who I am. The unseen, of course resulted in my being a Doula, but even otherwise, seeing “people” or aspects of people, certain qualities , gifts and waiting for them to come out – witnessing them is something I cannot change about me. Sometimes I have to wait for months and even years and yet. I am ok waiting out I think. I just cannot give up on people. I also pay a huge price often for this. But like they say if you know the WHY you can deal with any How.
When we go into Exile in search of the Elixir – only we can bring
Perhaps there is NO separation between the place and us. It’s said that after arriving in a new place, we will have replaced the entirety of the water in our bodies with that of the local water in just a few days. And so literally it is us.
When we forget this “place” that lives inside of us. We feel the pain of Exile. We feel the dislocation which is not real. It is one of our great forgetting. We keep looking for that outside when all the while it is living inside. And we suffer from “not-being”. We try to grow into our own skin. But forget that the growing has to happen from the inside. And so sometimes we start to shrivel. With the Unknown – Unbirthed Purpose, still inside us. As Carl Jung put it so eloquently, “When an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside as fate”. At times like these for me it helps to remember I stand on the shoulders of my Ancestors who were also in exile, in search of the promised land and they were not forsaken .
In Exile we learn to live without belonging – and in the process truly learn to understand and value it and have compassion.
Perhaps the exiles we go on, either with our choice or without – the grief and the suffering is to point us in our own direction. It may look and feel like “Endurance”, but maybe this is the opportunity to relinquish “control”. Perhaps like fish to water, we have no idea of where we are till we have to leave . Exile is then just a celebration of knowing, what was important and always there. Perhaps that which we took for granted. Exile is then exiting for Growth – mental, psychological and spiritual. Exile is important so that there is no Exodus.
In Indian mythology, Lord Ram with is wife and brother had to go on a 14 yrs exile. In that period he meets and fulfils his destiny. The trials and tribulation change him as a person. and also change the course of history
It’s a funny thing coming home. Nothing changes. Everything looks the same, feels the same. Even smells the same. You realize what’s changed is you.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
Maybe it’s time we look at who we are becoming and fighting against becoming. Perhaps we have been in exile for so long, the refugee camps have become homes and we have forgotten. Perhaps this “homelessness” we feel goes deeper than just our physical space. Perhaps we are looking for returning to ourselves. And maybe we need to stop fighting with ourselves and perhaps rebel against our “habitual ways of surviving”. And then maybe we can return home from the Exile And finally start to offer what our souls are here to offer to the world.
If we are truly silent we can hear the ancient waters in our veins gurgling and calling out. Time for the Exile to end – And the elixir to be brought out
The Black Sheep Gospels (from Toko pa)
1. Give up your vows of silence which only serve to protect the old and the stale.
2. Unwind your vigilance, soften your belly, open your jaw and speak the truth you long to hear.
3. Be the champion of your right to be here.
4. Know that it is you who must first accept your rejected qualities, adopting them with the totality of your love and commitment. Aspire to let them never feel outside of love again.
5. Venerate your too-muchness with an ever-renewing vow to become increasingly weird and eccentric.
6. Send out your signals of originality with frequency and constancy, honouring whatever small trickle of response you may get until it becomes a momentum.
7. Notice your helpers and not your unbelievers.
8. Remember that your offering needs no explanation. It is its own explanation.
9. Go it alone until you are alone with others. Support each other without hesitation.
10. Become a crack in the network that undermines the great towers of Establishment.
11. Make your life a wayfinding, proof that we can live outside the usual grooves.
12. Brag about your escape.
13. Send your missives into the network to be reproduced. Let your symbols be adopted and adapted and transmitted broadly into the new culture we’re building together.
From the book “Belonging”
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