The Year of Spinning

There is a particular kind of exhaustion that doesn't announce itself. It settles in quietly, and by the time you name it, it has already been living in your bones for months.

Last year was that kind of year for me.

I knew I was spinning. That's the strange thing about it — I wasn't unaware. I could see myself from a slight distance, watching the days blur, feeling the creative aliveness drain out of me in slow, steady increments. I just couldn't stop it.

I am a drama teacher — eighteen years at MAIS in Bangalore — and the theatre has always been where I feel most myself. But last year, even that felt far away. I had a play to write, and the blankness was real. I would sit with a story, feel the edges of something, and then watch it dissolve. I bought books. I read them. I genuinely believed I could do it. And still the writing stumped me in ways it never had before. I drew blank after blank.

And yet, somehow, the work got done. I wrote Urubhangam — fusing the Sanskrit classic with the Trojan Women, Gandhari walking into that grief-soaked stage — and then I wrote The Math Curse, and four other plays on mathematics. The ideas were real. The work was real. But the internal experience of making it felt like wading through something thick and resistive the entire time.

I also volunteer at Choe Khor Sum Ling, a Tibetan Buddhist study and practice centre here in Bengaluru, and that kept going too — courses, communications, fundraising, all of it. From the outside, I imagine it looked fine. From the inside, I barely recognised myself.

Add to this my brother's wedding, a sister's milestone birthday...

Meanwhile, life kept arriving in its unscheduled way. Pappa's health. Hospital visits. The particular weight of watching a parent need more care than before, and carrying that worry mostly alone. I was cooking for myself on days when cooking felt like climbing a hill. I had stopped exercising. My weight climbed sixteen kilograms. Medications were missed. Therapy was on hold. I had, without quite meaning to, removed all the scaffolding that helps me function — and then wondered why I felt like I was falling. Even though I was in denial

I used to think of that kind of year as failure. I said that word to myself, quietly, many times - I had failed. I said it from the beginning of the year, the middle and before the end even came, even though outwardly i was rendering an avatar of confidence.

But sitting here now, I'm not sure that's the right word for what happened. I think the more honest word is: I was overwhelmed, creatively drained, and I was doing it without enough support, and eventually the body and mind find ways to show you what you have been ignoring.

The turning came slowly, as these things do. Back to therapy. Back to medication. A small but deliberate shift in how I eat — more protein at breakfast, which sounds unremarkable but felt, in practice, like the first act of genuine self-care in a long time. Pappa now has round-the-clock nursing support, which has lifted a background anxiety I didn't fully realise I was carrying every single day.

I am not at the end of this. But I am somewhere different from where I was.

I am writing this because I think it matters to say it plainly: you can produce real, substantial work and still be unwell. You can show up for everyone else and be quietly disappearing. The scaffolding — therapy, medication, sleep, food, movement, the people who hold you — it isn't optional. It is the ground you stand on.

Getting back to it is not a failure. It is just the work of being human, which is never quite finished.

— Dee

I am still here

There are wounds that don't bleed where people can see them. Mine lives in my throat, in my hands, in the way I hesitate before I walk into a room now, wondering who has already decided what I am.

Last year broke something in me. Not because I failed - though there were days I felt like I did - but because I was broken deliberately, by someone who had the power to build me up and chose instead to take me apart.

It started quietly, the way these things do. A difficult year. It was not my best year, it was a year where i was primarily, tired. I was struggling, and I knew it. I said so. And every time I said so, I was mocked. Oh, you're complaining again. As if naming pain is weakness. As if asking for help is an accusation.

Instead, someone decided my struggle was an opportunity. Complaints were collected about me - gathered quietly, from peers, like evidence being built for a case that had already reached its verdict. I was tried without knowing I was on trial. My name was used as a punchline, a piñata. 

My competence was questioned, loudly, in ways designed to make others doubt me too. Does she even know what she's doing? Is she even good? 

When people are vitriolic and uncouth repeatedly, it sinks into your heart. You don't notice it happening. You just wake up one day and find that their voice has moved in, and it speaks in the first person now.

I lost people I thought were safe. I lost the ear of people I trusted. I lost - for a while - my own voice, because everywhere I turned, my expression was taken and twisted. Even my private spaces stopped feeling private. Even grief became gossip.

And then I lost something harder to name: the easy, unselfconscious faith I used to have in myself as a teacher.

I raised my voice at the children last year. I am not proud of that. But I understand it now for what it was - not cruelty, not incompetence, but a person running on empty who had been refused every form of refuelling - by this person and leadership.

I realized soon that this person wanted what I was doing. This person wanted to cut me off. 

An apology came, eventually. Partial. Official. Enough to close a file, not enough to name what was actually done. No apology for the peers turned. No apology for the confidence stolen. No apology for almost making people believe the story she told about me.

I am still angry. I want to say that clearly, without shame. Anger is the appropriate response to injustice. What this person did was a violation, underhanded, bullying, and very uncouth. It means I know what happened was wrong. It means I haven't accepted the verdict. I just accepted the partial apology... on paper.

And I am still here.

That is my protest. That I showed up. That I am showing up again. That somewhere underneath the fear and the exhaustion and the doubt she seeded about me, I know who I am. I know what my best work looks like. I have seen it in students' faces. I have heard it said aloud by people with no reason to lie.

She didn't apologize for nearly ruining my life. Maybe she never will.

But my life is not ruined. It is dented, and grieving, and learning to trust itself again.

And that, in the end, is more than she bargained for.

Storybook Spotlight: The Elephant's Child by Rudyard Kipling

 

The Elephant's Child

Author: Rudyard Kipling Illustrator: Emily Bolam Publisher: Dutton Children's Books, 1992

Where to Find It: Buy Here: The Elephant's Child on Amazon.in Read Online: Internet Archive

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Best For: Ages 3 and above. May need to be read aloud to younger children.

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The Tale in a Nutshell

What happens when you just cannot stop asking questions? When curiosity is so alive in you that no amount of scolding, shushing, or spanking can put it out? The Elephant's Child is a story that celebrates exactly this — that irrepressible, unstoppable, magnificent need to know. And it turns out, curiosity doesn't just get you into trouble. Sometimes, it changes everything.

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Why This Book Shines

This is one of Kipling's beloved Just So Stories — those glorious, playful tales that explain how things in the natural world came to be. This one answers a question children have probably never thought to ask: how did the elephant get its trunk?

The hero is a young elephant brimming with what Kipling delightfully calls 'satiable curiosity — insatiable curiosity — and he asks questions about everything and everyone. The Giraffe, the Lion, the Hippopotamus — each one responds not with an answer but with a spanking. And still he keeps asking.

His most daring question — what does the Crocodile have for dinner? — sends him on a journey to the banks of the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River. There, the Crocodile answers him not with words but with teeth, grabbing him by his little nose and pulling. And pulling. And pulling. Until what was once a small, bulgy nose becomes something altogether magnificent and useful — a trunk.

The story is told in Kipling's wonderfully theatrical voice, warm and conspiratorial, addressing the reader directly as O Best Beloved. It is a story made for reading aloud, with its rolling repetitions and delicious, absurd logic. The ending is quietly triumphant — the child who was punished for his curiosity returns home transformed, and his transformation transforms everyone else too.

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Artful Notes

Emily Bolam's illustrations are bold, joyful, and unapologetically childlike — painted with the confident, loose energy of someone who understands exactly what young eyes love to look at.

The colour palette is vivid and celebratory — electric greens, burnt oranges, deep teals, and bright reds fill every page with tropical warmth and life. The landscapes feel alive and slightly surreal, with swirling patterned hillsides and trees that look as though they've been painted by a very happy child with a very big brush.

The animals are rendered with real character — the Crocodile is sly and low-slung in murky water, the Lion gloriously maned and grumpy, the Hippopotamus a magnificent shade of blue. The Elephant's Child himself is endearing throughout, round and grey and expressive, his changing nose a visual anchor for the whole story.

The endpapers — a repeating pattern of orange and green elephants marching across a dark teal background — are a delight in themselves, and frame the story beautifully.

Bolam's art doesn't try to be realistic. It tries to be joyful. And it succeeds completely.

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Little Extras

This story carries a quiet but powerful message — that curiosity, even when it gets you into trouble, is worth protecting. The Elephant's Child is not rewarded despite his questioning nature. He is rewarded because of it.

It is also a wonderful read for drama classrooms — the repetition, the direct address, the comic timing, and the theatrical escalation of the tug-of-war scene make it a natural for performance and storytelling.

Good to use in the PSE Library and Drama classroom!

Asking for help....

I am ashamed of asking for help.

"It means you are weak. It puts you in a place of obligation; never ask anyone for help — the one who wipes your tears owns you." Amma used to say. "Don't ever beg, ask, solve everything yourself."

But I have asked for help. I am so ashamed and embarrassed because of this. Today, at 48, I cannot believe I am asking for help.

My father needs nursing care — even though he says he does not. I felt like a loser for asking for this help. I felt like a loser speaking of this with my sister, with my family. I struggled for months to voice it — because I felt like I was abandoning my father. Leaving him downstairs when I am upstairs hurts me.

When Amma fell in 2011 and needed care, I looked up nursing services. But father said, "that is your job as a daughter, your duty. No one will be there. You have to do all her nursing, her caring, her recuperating support." I believed him. I agreed. I followed it.

But this time, I felt weak.

I have felt weak since 2024 — spiritually, emotionally. I have felt pulled down. Whom do I communicate this to? I have sought solace in my room, upstairs. I don't want to meet anyone, or talk to anyone. Just be a shut-in. Not to sleep, but to sit there. Numb. The only time I have felt happy was when I have worked with kids, or when father has been well.

Just the idea of taking him to the hospital — even for a routine follow-up — sends me into a state of panic.

Asking for help, anywhere, makes me feel overwhelmingly like I have failed. Like I will be abandoned. Cast off like a weakling. Asking for help also makes me feel like there will be a backlash — anger, distance. This inner conversation is like a pressure cooker, building quietly, with nowhere to go.

There was another time I asked for help. At work, I asked my boss for some help.I am ashamed I asked for help, I cannot even come to look at my Superboss now. 

 

My counsellor said that belief is the lie.

Being targeted by someone who operates through whisper and innuendo is not a failure of strength. It is simply what happens when a certain kind of person decides to make you their project. And asking for help to stop it — naming it, documenting it, walking into that office — that was not weakness revealing itself.

That was clarity, finally, finding its voice.

My counsellor has gently pointed something out. She says these beliefs are part of a schema — a set of core beliefs formed early, often in childhood, that quietly charter every path we take. We don't choose them consciously. We absorb them from the people we love, the rooms we grew up in, the things that were said and unsaid. And then we live by them for decades, mistaking them for truth.

Changing a schema is tough. It doesn't happen in a single conversation or a single realisation. It happens in the noticing — again and again — of the moment the old belief fires. The pressure in the chest. The shame that arrives before thought does.

I am in that noticing now.

Coming back to asking for help, my views are being replaced — slowly, imperfectly, but genuinely.

Amma's words made sense in the world she knew — a world where survival meant self-reliance, where vulnerability could genuinely be used against you. She wasn't wrong for her time, her circumstances, her fear. She gave me what she had.

But I am starting to see that what she handed me, along with her strength, was also her wound. And I have been carrying it as though it were wisdom, when some of it was just... pain. Passed down, unexamined, until now.

Asking for nursing support for my father is not abandonment. It is, if I look at it clearly, an act of love — one that requires me to see his actual needs above my conditioning about what a daughter should be. That is harder, not weaker.

And asking for help for myself — even just naming this exhaustion to my sister, to my family — that is not begging. That is being human. That is the thing I would never withhold from someone I loved.

I am 48. I have been strong in the way I was taught to be strong, for a very long time. But I think real strength might look different from here. It might look like reaching out a hand. It might look like saying: I cannot do this alone, and that is not a failure.

I don't have this fully figured out. The shame still comes. The pressure cooker still hisses. But I am learning to sit with the discomfort of asking, rather than collapse under the weight of never doing so.

That, I think, is what the work looks like right now.

It might, in fact, look exactly like what I just did.

Sharu's House Warming

Sharu and Tilak celebrated the housewarming of their new house yesterday in Hampapura, Bidadi. It was a beautiful drive there, and the family got to meet up. 

The house is not entirely done, so there were sand, rocks, and stones still around, and the kids loved it. Usually, grihapraveshe is done when the house construction is 80% done. I suppose it is about the auspicious day that they select for the Grihapravesha / House warming

The kids were very, very happy to be there. They played most of the time, unsupervised. Cub 3, Cub 5, and their two cousins. There were cars parked around, and the drivers were there, as were all of us walking around the layout, because there was really no one around except our family. 

Practically a new layout. Beautiful, with trees, flowering shrubs, and tall grass. The kids did not mind the hot sun. It was sweltering, but they were having a joyful time. 

 

The food was good, the company was pleasant. All in all a good day was had.

Maama and Uma

 

There's a photograph I keep returning to in my mind — Shaila, Ravi, Vidya, Uma, and Bhanu. 

Children of Nanjunda Sharma and Savitramma. The gang that raised me.

Savitramma, Pranjal and Nanjunda Sharma

But before I talk about the gang, I have to talk about him.

My grandfather — Maama, we called him — was the first love of my life. I spent chunks of my early childhood in his orbit: some evenings, whole stretches of time that I still carry with me. He worked as a clerk, and he was fond of reminding me that he had so many responsibilities. He said it with a kind of theatrical weight, but he also made it funny. He had loads of joke books. He had a temper. He had a stubbornness that was almost a point of pride.

And he had Uma.

My mother was his favourite, and everyone knew it. She was his go-to, the one who made him smile without trying. There was nothing she could do that he didn't approve of. Between them was a bond that felt almost apart from the rest of the family — a friendship as much as anything else.

But it was hard, too. For both of them.

Maama had grown up poor, the last born in his family, and by the time I knew him he was holding up an entire world on a salary of less than ₹700 a month. His wife and five children of his own. Two sisters-in-law. A niece and a nephew. All the children studying. Five girls among them who would, by the expectations of the time, need to be married off. The weight of that — the logistics, the worry, the sheer relentlessness of it — is something I can only begin to imagine.

How Savitramma ran that household, I will never fully understand. She did it, and she kept doing it, and the cost showed up in her body the way costs always do. Both she and Maama carried severe anxiety — his came out as ulceritis, hers as hypochondria. I think now about what that anxiety must have been rooted in. The constant, low hum of what if something goes wrong? What if someone gets sick? Who will marry the girls? How will we manage? That kind of fear doesn't stay in the mind. It moves into the body and lives there.

Then Uma got a job at Canara Bank.

Maama had pushed her towards it, and when she got it, something shifted. She began to help run the house — with joy, I think, though I also remember her saying it was hard. It was hard. She became, quietly and without anyone quite deciding it, the person both her parents leaned on. Emotionally. Financially. Practically. She was the oldest daughter, and she held the shape of the family together.

When she and Pappa got married, they lived first in Jayanagar, then moved to Sripura, and eventually she bought a house in Kumara Park. That was the moment everything changed — not just for her, but for everyone.

The oldest daughter had bought a house.

The oldest daughter had bought a house.

At twenty-six.

In a family that had grown up carefully, anxiously, counting every rupee — that act meant something enormous. It meant a new kind of safety. It meant the fear had not won. But it meant something else too, something that rippled outward to every one of her siblings: it is possible. You can make a home for yourself. You can do this. And I will be there to guide you and support you when you do.

She didn't just buy a house. She quietly rewrote what the family believed was within reach.

And in doing so, she became what she would remain for decades — the compass, the beacon, and the backbone of the family.

My aunts - My angels 👼

at Vidya's house.. there is Vidya smiling back

Shaila :)

When Amma passed away that night, my first call was to Shaila, my aunt, because Vidya was not picking up. I called my aunts. I call them my angels. Shaila made her way with Tilak, and  Sharu was working. They came to Apollo. 

I had reached Appollo and Amma was pronounced dead soon after. I think I went mad for a bit, I remember crying in shock and grief. I knew deep down that she would pass away soon, but the shock of it - seeing her fall in front of me and die. I was in denial about the extent of her illness. 

I had told Shaila, that Amma had a heart attack, but by the time I told her, Amma had already died, I think. Anyway, Vidya called me, and said, "sorry putta, sorry, putta" repeatedly. Soo,n Shaila arrived, and Vidya arrived as well. 

"...and then there were two." Bhanu, Ravi, and Uma had left. Now there were two siblings in grief. Uma had been their rock, the eldest, their own second mother angel. Now she was gone. 

Shaila, Ravi, Vidya, Uma and Bhanu

Even though she was not able to easily, Vidya climbed into the ambulance and patted Amma on her head and gave her a kiss. Shaila was crying.

They could have crumbled. Uma was the rock. But they looked at me, going mad, I suppose, from having seen my mother collapse in front of me. This was the third death in Saraswathy 501, since June 6, 2018 - we had lost Vijayamma, Padma, and now Amma in April 2019. 

Shaila took over and said she would sleep in Saraswathy 501 with me. Vidya took over other areas. They became my mother over the next few months when I was alone. Pappa had flown away to the US to Didi's house. The grief was too heavy on all of us. 

I was alone in Saraswathy 501 during the summer holidays, and I survived because of Vidya and Shaila. They called almost every hour, checked in on me, taught me to cook, held my hand as I cleaned out Amma's belongings, sent away the hospital bed, and just sat with me in silence. 

When your life is one thing only for years, how do you live the next day, when you don't have a purpose beyond that one thing? 

We laughed about how crazy, silly, spunky, bossy, caring and giving she was.  I could not think about anything else. nothing negative. Neither could Vidya or Shaila - even though they had faced it. 

They just held me, gently and kindly. 💞💞💞

The day the earth had a dance party!

One day, Amma, didi and I were sitting on the floor in the hall at 65. We had come back from school, I was 4 and Didi was 6. Amma was feeding us with Kaituttu, and we had to always have a tumbler of water next to us. Suddenly, my tumbler fell on the ground. I remember looking up as if wanting to tell Amma, " I did not spill it, Amma," but the room started to swing.. Amma grabbed didi and me and ran out. We had a long run from the out house to the street, and the path was moving... finally, we made it, and Amma was still holding us close. The neighbours were out as well. I was scared, Didi was wide-eyed, and held on to Amma. Soon the swinging stopped. The Earth stopped moving. Everyone in the neighbourhood who was on the streets started to say, bhookampa, earthquake, and there was a small meeting. 

On the way back Amma explained it to us. There is movement in the inside of the earth, that creates a movement outside. This can sometimes be small, and sometimes bring down buildings. But let us be happy it was just a small quake now. 

Does it happen everywhere/

Would pappa have felt it at work?

Did ajji feel it?

Did taata feel it in heaven?

Do gods create it? 

Does ganesha maami feel it?

Do mice feel it?

Do elephants feel it?

Do clouds feel it?

We sat back down on the redoxide floor, Amma asked didi to bring a wipe to dab the spilled water, and reminded her to wash her hands. She waited for Didi to come back, and continued feeding us with Kaituttu. 

Do crocodiles feel it? 

Did it happen because elephants had a dance party? 

Dormant

 This morning, I walked into work

feeling good about myself.

I met a colleague on her walk.
She shared some news about her health.
I told her I was sorry about her troubles.

Then she began to talk about office politics.

And something in me cracked open.

I get triggered a lot.

It feels like there is a volcano of rage inside me.
This is, of course, unprocessed anger.

The rage needs only a small tip-off.
And then—burning hot lava.

It can erupt in any area of my life.
And it can relocate itself into any area of my life.

Work — injustice.
Home — abandonment.
Love — snapping.
Siblings — bullying.
Authority figures — injustice, again.

Same lava.
Same volcano.
Only the landscape changes.

Feeling taken for granted.
Used.
Thrown away.

These are intense.

There is nothing that truly douses the fire.
It goes dormant.
And then it comes back.

Like a pressure cooker, it builds.
With nowhere for the pressure to go.

Anger that wasn’t allowed.
Protest that wasn’t safe.
Boundaries that weren’t respected.
Pain that had to stay quiet.

So the question keeps returning:

What do we do with these volcanoes?

Maybe the work isn’t to stop the volcano,
but to give the pressure somewhere to go
before it burns everything in its path.

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More / Less

 I worked on many versions of this More or Less sheet, assessing all the things that I need to improve my life - more or less of. 

i hope i get a little more reading time, and i read a whole bunch of books

and less of each one of the less list. 

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Inheritance

 Amma passed away in 2019. I still cannot bring myself to write about her. It is avoidance. I can remember all the wonderful times I have had with her. Avoidance is the blanket covering the dark areas. But when I think about the painful moments with her, I am filled with sadness about how much she had to endure, and go through in a life that dealt her with bad times. I feel bad that she had to go through so much in her life. I feel angry towards the people who treated her badly. I feel sad that Didi, too, endured so much because of her. I defend her. The best of her. Her worst, in the mouth of others, is censured in front of me. I won't stand for it. Because she gave a lot to her siblings and the people around her. She gave without a bit of hesitation. She gave lovingly. So, when her siblings badmouth her, I fight like I am scathed. I protect her memory. No one dares say a thing about my mother. 

Privately, I say, I received her worst. I feel ashamed to admit that I suffered a lot because of her. I have to be understanding, my mind chimes. But I am angry. A lot of her ruined me, as did a lot of my father. 

They were babies themselves, I feel like saying, in parenting and life, with no good role models to follow. They did not mean to hurt you. They too sacrificed and wanted happiness. They did the best that they could, given the situation... remember, father was a posthumous child. How could he show fatherly love when he did not get any? 

I keep repeating this to myself, and mostly, all that is true.Which is why I never speak about her badly. I say she was sunshine. She was. She was also dark, and could sink into the depths. She was cruel, cunning, and hurful. She was spiteful, as well. She was suicidal. She needed unwavering loyalty. She needed her people to stand with her. Father abandoned her emotionally. Older sister left. She latched on to me, and I stood, when it was fun, and also when it was abuse. Repeated abuse. Not just with words, but with actions and emotions. 

What happened to me? No one asked. I just stood there, loyal, and took it., I fought her fights, her battles. I stood there. I was locked in the same room with her. No one checked in, and beyond "how are you?" and "hang in there" no one was interested. 

I was caught in the torrents of my parents' volatile emotions. My mother's illness took my life away. I was her crutch. I am still taken aback. I live, 47 years in a body that is mummified with her ghostly voice inside me. She rules my mind, he does too. I feel trapped. I have to let the ghosts go. 

- Dee 

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