This blog makes me feel abnormally normal. Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing, I don’t know. All I know is, the blank text box I see when I start a new blog post gives me a clean canvas. I can splat it with paint, I can draw a pretty rose and if I want to simply mix a bit of white paint with orange and phase it out to the bottom of the frame with brush strokes as wild as my imagination stretches, I can.
Recently though, life has been very up and down. I haven’t had time to even process a day’s account in my journal, let alone buy my own paints; I would like to gaze at my frame, as I let my brush wander, see what my mind mirrors onto the page. I seem to have given up though and I don’t know why. The colours I had, they dried out and looking back at each blog post gave me a sense of shame. You never really give up on anything if you truly don’t want to. You only give up because you allow yourself to. There are only 12 + 12 hours in the day. 12 hours is go go mode. The rest is wind down, eat, sleep, miscellaneous mode. That’s the way it is for me anyway.
Admittedly, it was more than a few inspirational quotes, strips of shame and seeing Monet in Paris, in a hotel I would sell my brother to be in for just one night . It took more for me to give myself a kick up an area a well mannered lady never mentions, but I will because what the hell is that anyway? Society’s way of making us act and behave the way we ‘should’. Well, okay, I guess I will follow it by saying I needed a kick up the ass. Now, my mother cracked what this means for me a long time ago. I sometimes think she isn’t human because how does she just know everything?? She figured out I have a ‘I want to be so different I am a pink sheep amongst a society of white sheep’ complex. I want to be SO different, I am not even called the black sheep of the family. I have to be more. This complex has many roots and an ode, in due course, can be carefully written to encapsulate them all. This blog, however, used to be one of the standstills for that unparalleled ferocity when comes to being THAT pink sheep, before I felt like it became everybody’s thing. Now, I am not saying I am the first person to walk on the blog planet in all of mankind. Being an Indian, Bihari girl, with first generation strings deftly attached to every part of her personality at the ripe, untamed, sweet age of twenty-two is not something uncommon. The thing is, I write about it, that too, in full vigour. I talk about everything, everything deemed embarrassing. I make sure the closed doors that stifle a monster called, fear of judgement, in its skin crawling and emotionally itching ways, are always open because the monster can do nothing to me now. I invite other people, who read this and understand what I am talking about, to do the same. Teach me how to get rid of this monster faster than it gets rid of me, ME and who I am, what I originally wanted to do, before it made me second guess and fall to the pit of my own stomach. Make sure it leaves altogether. I’m talking about the pink sheep quality you see.
I know what you might be thinking, God, she is full of herself. Maybe I am. Maybe I am just self aware. Maybe, I don’t care what people think and do this because I feel it’s part of my purpose, part of what I exist for. I’ll leave that up for debate. For me, there’s are no cards to be played when it comes to why this blog exists. I want this to be a safe space for everyone like me and everyone not like me, to relate, laugh. You’re not in a glass box, the whole world walking around you, no one understanding you’re shrouding, eclipsed by the noise of everything and nothing at the same time. These little stories act as a peephole into realms of different realities; daily lives, daily people. I felt alone, even though I was surrounded by people who were going through the same phases I was, in the same order. I felt like I couldn’t express myself. I was so locked in fear. It took writing about these delicate moments, recapping why I am so detailed in Indian ways, even though the lining is British to tell myself, Diya, you need to start writing and posting on that blog again. I feel such a deep sense of responsibility when it comes to this topic of fusion, being unique, staying true to yourself, that saying I don’t have time is a lousy excuse.
As a relaunch, I want to present (pretend I am reading it out loud to you) a piece I wrote for a Diversity and Inclusion session at my workplace. Amongst glowing feedback and a myriad of discussions I didn’t even think were possible in the span of half an hour, I found faith – perhaps something I have lost in 9-5 clamour, in the numbing ‘mind the gap between train and the platform’. This topic, in the extent of things that modernism, politicians, TED talkers, influencers, bloggers and all the different representations of splotches of society talk about, is still not covered widely enough. As someone who dealt with bouts of emotions, softened and done a bit of soul searching to find even some answers, I can say that it’s a blasphemy of some sort because how are we meant to grow into the people we want to become? How are we meant to heal our inner children? Where are the answers? I can’t give you the exact coordinates about where. This blog could be a good start on your trail, nonetheless. I am going to relaunch it and give you a taste of what it could be like to go soul searching again, especially for those of us who pay close attention to a connection a lot of people can’t seem to fathom; the brain and the heart. Somewhere in between, I think my soul lies. I can’t tell you exactly where, I haven’t figured it ALL out yet, god forbid I ever do, how boring will life be?! I can tell you how it moves though, the way it sways between the two and sometimes gives up in a huff, only to get up to puff all the friction off, try once again to harmonise, not slip, keep moving. When it comes to talking about culture fusion, I feel there is a two second lag between saying the words, introducing the topic and me realising, I’m about to let people see a part of my soul. So, I said this in my introduction and I will say it again; read with the fire and passion I write with, it’s all me and it’s all you.
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Diya: Diversity and Inclusion – Culture Fusion 23/02/2023
I should have started writing earlier. I wish I did, I’d have the authenticity of raw, unfiltered thoughts, simply jotted down on paper. I would have a collection of anecdotes, maybe even a free flowing story of how it feels to be on Mars, when all you’ve ever known is Venus. They’re planets, we’ve been told, they are far away and to us, since Earth is the only thing we know, all we have are pictures, things we have heard and research, leaving us in the abyss. One would think they are similar enough. From afar, that’s the scope of your knowledge and how could it not be? You haven’t been to Venus or Mars, you’ve heard of Jupiter and Pluto, galaxies, black holes but to really know, you have to bask in the experience. You have to understand that the switch between these two planets isn’t just about their distance from the sun, it is about so much more than most people are aware of, so much more than they can think of, it is in little things like pouring hot dal on your cooling rice in comparison to picking up the cutlery farthest away from you when that first course is presented.
The analogy of planets to introduce the idea of what it feels like to belong to two different worlds is one I never imagined would fit so well. It makes me think, why do I wish I was more open from an earlier stage in my life? Why didn’t I start expressing myself sooner? Maybe this whimsical explanation would have brought fifteen year old Diya some peace. It’s because I like to sit, sink and lay in the feeling and then, I like to write. I can only make sense of it with time, with understanding of how I feel, experiences, first times, shocks and whilst I wish I snatched these moments from the clock ticking away to write down pure emotions, I know I may have been fazed. I know I wouldn’t have been able to articulate.
Only a time machine will be able to take me to my first year in the UK, where my language translator told me I had to start understanding more than just Maths equations and actually learn English to a year ago, when I came to the conclusion that my conscience now repeats things to me in English, even though my dreams are in Hindi. Hindsight and growth in mindset; the essence of time, without the explicit knowledge that it is passing, it has let me exhale years of pent up thoughts and pressure in one steady breath. It has allowed me to process all my emotions and accept that I am not just part of one block, my background is so different, I am not even part of two. I am my own block and if I don’t want it to be a block, I won’t be one. I can be anything I want to be. I don’t need stringy tales of how many different ethnicities people have circled me in, heresay of how whitewashed I have become living here or the judgement from aunties about the way I dressed on my last birthday. These are all ways to put me in a block and if I continue surrendering to social norms and the apprehensiveness that kerbs it, even at full speed, there is no escape.
The escape velocity, that is what I didn’t have before. I may have had indirect channelling of the things I needed to tell someone and an abundance of feelings with nowhere to go, but I have been able to use it and make it my greatest strength, self expression. Love too, a lot of it, all to myself, from myself! There is a certain beauty in looking back, especially using my newfound velocity. I like being able to watch the pages flick themselves through. It’s not forced. It’s natural, self rhythmic, and that is how I want to start by touching just the surface.
