This is my newsletter #17: Riya Roy
Dearest,
Source: Shitty Watercolour
Yesterday was my birthday, which is when I wrote this letter to you. Now when you are reading it, I am already a day older, and probably a little blue with all the birthday attention gone! 😄 Writing to you was Rohini’s gift to me, and I don’t have words to tell how touched I am by the gesture. She is pure pixie dust, this one, and aren’t we ridiculously fortunate to have her and The Alipore Post in our lives?!
This has been a beautiful year. It has been difficult, backbreaking, heart-shattering and delightful despite it all, or maybe because of it all. I entered the year with a list of dreams that I meant to achieve, and by March I knew none of them were possible. What I did next was what anyone would do when faced with heartbreak and a global pandemic: I started reading Pema Chödrön’s, When Things Fall Apart.😆 I would read it out loud every morning to my Maa who would sip on her tea and nod once in a while, sometimes with tears in her eyes. Mom and I both agree that Pema serves wisdom like mozzarella!
The ‘soft wisdom about hard things’ idea that my friends know I can’t shut up about, Pema Chödrön epitomises that. Her book has humour and it has a rare kindness that has been learnt through discipline. She doesn’t guilt you into inspiration, and she offers a gentleness that flows outside-in and then radiates right back into the world. This is a book for anyone who is feeling groundless, who feels defeated by all that is bad in the world, and who wants to learn how to lend a tender but firm hand to that scared child within. I was all of these people at the beginning of this year. I still am, but now I also know where to go when I feel this way. I have carved out a corner for myself, and I call it The Nook.
The Nook is a Sunday newsletter/letter of love that I have been curating since July. With the pandemic which compelled us all to physically distance ourselves and stay indoors, we were forced to resume conversations that we had been running away from. The Nook was born out of one of these conversations when my anxious little heart told me that it didn’t know what to do, that it was terrified by the uncertainty of everything. Through The Nook, I began welcoming fellow scared folks to explore the tenderness of each moment by walking into its mysteries with me. In The Nook, we started opening ourselves up to the universe in hope to encounter our hearts, and today it has been 18 weeks of that, and the experience has been nothing but magical. So in complete Nook fashion, let me invite you to pause, play, rewind and fast forward with a care package that will look after your heart for at least a week. Let’s step in, shall we?
A verse:
Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.
- Mary Oliver, The Uses of Sorrow
Some soft wisdom:
To love someone long term is to attend a thousand funerals of the people they used to be.
The people they're too exhausted to be any longer. The people they don't recognise inside themselves anymore. The people they grew out of, the people they never ended up growing into. We so badly want the people we love to get their spark back when it burns out; to become speedily found when they are lost.
But it is not our job to hold anyone accountable to the people they used to be. It is our job to travel with them between each version and to honour what emerges along the way.
Sometimes it will be an even more luminescent flame.
Sometimes it will be a flicker that disappears and temporarily floods the room with a perfect and necessary darkness.
- Heidi Priebe
Some tunes:
Urban Folk Project- Learn the Marathi lullaby, neej neej re Bala
One of the comments reads: “It makes me wanna tame some wolves and run into the deep woods”
I miss long drives with my best friend and this song on the stereo
Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle chillin’: BollywoodDirect
A film:
Nata Metlukh’s animation “Awkward”, through uncomfortable and comical scenarios, captures many of the embarrassing moments even the most graceful folks experience: a man’s stomach growls loudly, another enthusiastically waves at a stranger, and a simple haircut goes awry. (Courtesy: Colossal)
Watch it here:
Down memory lane with Jamini Roy
Jamini Roy was an Indian painter best known for combining traditional Indian and Western art styles to create unique, complex works. Born on April 11, 1887 in Beliatore, India, he went on to study under Abanindranath Tagore at the Government College of Art in Kolkata at the age of 16, where he learned academic drawing and painting in the Western tradition. After graduating, Roy adopted the simple forms, flat colors, and humble paints of Bengali folk artists. Today, Roy’s works can be found in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Harn Museum of Art at the University of Florida, and the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi, among others. Roy died on April 24, 1972 in Kolkata, India.
Text and art courtesy: Artnet
Last Supper, Jamini Roy
Source: Sotheby’s
Goodness to walk away with from the nook:
#YourWordsAreMine: Aishwarya Shrivastav on Desire, Komal Thami on Anger and Amrita Brahmo on Gratitude
A parting poem by yours truly:
the dwindling flowers in the vase,
the ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts
and wrappers of chocolates devoured yesterday.
the books gathering in the shelves,
and the newspapers piling up in the corner
closest to the old squeaky armchair.
the bed sheet peeled off the bed,
and thrown like a shawl
around the shoulders of the sofa.
the photo frames holding memories prisoner,
a feeble attempt to get back
at the past which does the same to us.
the pages of the calendar
with oil stains at the edges,
the chargers guarding plug points as their own
while pens lie naked on the mat
and their caps hide
in the most unreachable of gaps...
grace doesn't always look grand
and hence we miss it often.
but look closely, and there it sits
under the doormat with the keys to this house
that has never failed
to resemble your heart.
If you enjoyed this slice of The Nook, consider subscribing here.
Also, I just launched a calendar yesterday. The Do for Joy calendar has affirmations, set of delightivities and bonuses that take you to corners that have brought me great pleasure and will treat you with the same tenderness.
You can preorder here or here.
Love, Riya