I am going to talk about the picture above- it is me as Leo as I can muster to be without looking like a lion. My hair is in disarray- it always is. No amount of conditioner or high-priced shampoo can make it better. I have been to the salon twice in my life and it did something for me to feel like I was ‘becoming’ but hey, don’t you think a messy head is so giving? Anything that does make my hair (jattas) better lasts only for a day and by the end of it, my hair is least of what a lion’s mare looks like- making me less of what I was not even full before. Do you get it?

I heard that sleeping on silk pillows makes the hair stay as is and when you wake up after a night of nightmares, the hair is not knotty. It does not form nests. No eggs.

But who sleeps on silk pillows? Not me I thought. I don’t think my ancestors did. What they did not- I must if it is a necessity but what necessity does a knotted jatadhaari hair probe? Who can tell me?

For the longest time, I have slept on floors and beds that can give spinal deformities and like half my India, I have gotten back problems- every time I read and crane my neck, I miss my flat floors and sweaty body trying to sleep as a child in Gandhinagar. I remember that having my own bed in law school hostels was not made for solving back problems at all. I remember massaging my own back and neck like my mother did when I missed her and when my injury was too immediate to even go to a doctor or seek help because nobody told us that the back and the spine are also important. Nobody told us that the mind is actually, nothing. That it can sustain itself if god will.

The title of this newsletter is a song. That I heard a while back and ever since I have been hearing it again and again. You know when we say that a song has been overkilled? Well, this one does not die. simply resists to-it is just so beautiful- and why?

Dead Frogs Allan Rayman

Another thing that caught me off guard was how little did anyone know about Allan Rayman and even his wiki’s first footnote talks about how mysterious can Rayman actually get?

"I like leaving it up to people. I'm also not cut out for some kind of limelight. That kind of stuff scares the shit out of me. I don't have the mindset to be some kind of icon or anything like that. I'm just trying to do my thing. And I have a really good team behind me to help fulfill that vision."- Allan

I have been inching toward that anonymity of an artist’s life that contributes towards her Art. What becomes Art, despite?

A cord was wrapped around my throat, but the doctor had proclaimed the chord wouldn't have killed me. I was born with my fists out. Against. It was raining, is what my mother remembers. There were lots of smutty clouds in the sky, and yet the stars were visible when the contractions started. Mother was young. She is believed to have been dreaming because she was muttering throughout the bullock ride to the unnamed hospital. She was in enormous pain because I must have been in terrible pain when I had announced my birth. I was too pained to have uttered a sound. Or a shriek. Through a dramatic drop in the stillness of birth at a rustic hospital that had grunting and gurgling buffaloes swanking its entrances. I do not remember.

Mother says I was playing with my aunt who dropped me from the third floor of a four-storey house in the evening heat of Gaya’s tranquil, days after my birth, exactly a year after, on my birthday. And I somewhat remember it every time I trip and fall. Every time I am up on heights. When I am nearer to the sky, away from the earth.

I hung from a tree branch, I did not smash onto the ground, no bleeding, no fractured skulls. The branch would have broken if I were two or three. My little body hanging on to dear life was the first time when I knew I was born. My mother’s womb must have felt unadventurous. No scratch. No memory carved on the skin but I think I met death, briefly. (Excerpt from my essay published in Outlook India) If you have not, you can read the whole story of my childhood that almost killed me- almost is the keyword here.

It has been a while but you know how much I want you to be happy- I also know you have been struggling- so -

To Make You Feel Good-

1. Beautiful Life by Sheena Melwani

2. Kabira Lofi Remake

3. Pakistani Reacts to Bahut Pighle Hain Zakir khan

4. A.R.Rahman Mashup

5. Madame Curie's speech in 1911 while winning the second Nobel prize

6. Chadar trek: An adventure of a lifetime

7. How I was born 8 times

8. Why I Didn’t Take 15 Full time Writing Jobs & Why

9. A MARKETER’S READING LIST

10. 14+ Common Grammar Mistakes All Writers Make

Hope you are having better days and the heatwave is finally saying goodbye’s so I hope for nothing but the rain to wash our tears away and the seasons to make us feel like crying ain’t the only way we can feel alive-

Wrote this Newsletter listening to The lotus Sutra!

This is a free newsletter but not cheap. If you love it, consider supporting it by liking and sharing this newsletter. This letter is reader-supported, hence the lack of ads and sponsors. I don’t get much feedback on my newsletters (I have approximately 2000 and counting readers) If you do read, please feel free to drop me a note or hit the “heart” on the newsletter-

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