Yet Untitled 089 - Anatomies of Various Falls

A note on lapsing and rising

Dearest Yet Untitler

Greetings from the other side of mayhem.

Nothing to worry about, but some shit went down in my life; shit that shook me up, and my family too. There were a few days when we were gazing at the future from a pretty low place - from where we fell, after the shit that went down caused us to stumble.

Seen from that low place, the future resembled Leonard Cohen’s apocalyptic vision of it. He says -

“I’ve seen the future, brother; it-is-MURDER.”

But this is not how I predominantly view the future. While seeing myself as subject to all that ails our planet and our species, I usually see myself - and all of us - eventually finding our way forward. Over the past week, this was challenged. There was a sudden shift in perspective towards bleakness, where for a time - whether I thought of the future in terms of parenthood, of the weather, of career or simply in terms of getting older - the future felt like a downright train-wreck.

Speaking of trains…

I’m reminded of a clear, crisp winter’s day in Amsterdam from a few years ago, when Vani and I boarded a train, both of us loaded on a narcotic brownie. As the train moved, for about ten minutes I felt like I was in a Studio Ghibli film and the train was moving through a solid wall of water, cutting through it like butter. Then - my lightweight system, overloaded with a sugar and contraband - decided to shut itself down. One moment I was standing in the sunlight streaming through the windows, the next moment was pitch black. After a block of time that I have lost to oblivion, I found myself gazing up from the floor of the train compartment at Vani’s face screaming inaudibly at me in terror. Behind her, every passenger in this moderately crowded train was staring at me, with faces of pity that seemed to be saying - “these drug-crazy tourists, when will they learn???” I remember thinking from way down on that floor - “It does not get worse than this.” I thought of the future in horrible terms. And of my indelible shame.

With brownies inside us, before boarding the train. Amsterdam, c. 2017

Now, from the easy armchair of retrospect, I declare: “OF COURSE, it could get worse than that, ya dufus. You were fine. And there was no indelible shame. Just a daze that lingered for a day, and then vanished!”

Similarly, with this present ‘fall’. My knock-the-wind-outta-yer-guys mayhem is over. It is now a memory of mayhem. And my family and I have since picked ourselves up from the floor and sat ourselves on armchairs and are gazing back at the past days with picantes in our hands.

Well, almost. The picante is imaginary right now as I write. I like to use both hands when I type up my YU instalments.

Some kinda picante, Vietnam, c. 2013

As the sharp spice of my imaginary picante opens my sinuses, I find it interesting how much my idea of the future has fluctuated over the past few days. It seems to be about where you are looking from. It only confirms what my Buddhist practice tells me - that we are constantly perceiving reality through the lens of a life that’s shuttling between a spectrum of possible states bookended by suffering at one end and enlightenment at the other. When you’re down, well, no prizes for guessing which end of the spectrum you’ll be looking from.

I remember another very significant fall - on a running track during athletics tryouts. I was 11, I was out of breath, my lungs felt like they were exploding (I’ve referred to this story in YU 087 as well). I was carried to the infirmary, declared asthmatic, and I spent the following days nursing the idea of a future that would not be athletic at all. But that is not how the future turned out at all, with me doing all sorts of sporty things in my 30s and 40s that the above-mentioned, worried, 11 year old Vasant would have been delighted to hear.

Sanjay Gandhi National Park marathon, c. 2017

But 11-year-old Vasant sitting in the infirmary would have also thought this athletic future unlikely, because he had fallen and was down. Comforted as he was by some good friends, they did not know his deeper sadness at being then stuck in the idea that he likely occupied a substandard body. But that Vasant did not know the amazing books he would read in the future, the fantastic ideas he would encounter, the fantastic people he would meet, that would change this impression that he had of his future.

Mumbai, c. 2024

I read many books about running after that fall, and I think each one of them served to lift me out of that hole I had fallen into. Each time, as I was lifted out, I viewed my future differently. Each time, I pictured myself enjoying athleticism and physicality more and more, in ways I could never imagine.

I think it’s amazing that there’s so much in life that can change our perspective and surprise us. I’m also surprised by how quickly I forget this fundamental pattern of life and need to remind myself.

Katherine Rundell, an author I hadn’t heard of before I encountered her books at the Jaipur Literature Festival this year, eloquently describes this wonderful tendency of life to surprise us with its possibilities:

Real true hope isn't the promise that everything will be all right - but it's a belief that the world has so many strangenesses and possibilities that giving up would be a mistake; that we live in a universe shot through with the unexpected.

There's never been a single decade in human history when we have not taken ourselves by surprise: we, the ungainly, wonky-toothed human species, have an endless potential for change. I am not an opti-mist, or a pessimist; l am a possibilityist. The possibilities out there for discovery, for knowledge, for transforming the world, are literally infinite - there are spectacular ideas that we will have in the next ten years that we can't even begin to dream of now.

From - The Book of Hopes

Edited by Katherine Rundell

This week, I watched two films about the power of perspective. The first was Monster by Hirokazu Kore-eda. A story told from a variety of point of view, meanings shift without warning in ways I wasn’t used to. It was so intriguing that it pulled me in deep, and I felt I learned something important about life - that what I can see in front of me on any given day is only a small part of that vista’s truth. I feel I knew this, but also…I feel didn’t.

The second film was Justine Triet’s ‘Anatomy of a Fall’. Again, the film made clear that the Truth looks so different depending on where you’re looking from.

From down on the floor, after a fall, I found that I repeatedly tended to forget all of life’s possibilities and did not believe that things could change - that I could change my perspective, even by simply getting up again.

This narrative of falling and getting up - while writing about it, I’m convinced that it’s one of those grand metaphors that you cannot escape when thinking about life in broad terms.

It’s also - to my mind - probably the inspiration behind that boxing film sequence we’ve all seen a million times, where Rocky’s down on the mat and he’s trying to crawl back up to his feet. It would be much easier if he’d stay down, but he doesn’t want to. That’s why he’s the hero. Dolph Lundgren waits to knock him back down if he dares stand up.

But Rocky keeps trying.

Dangal, Panipat, c. 2009

Rather than evoke this oft seen image again, I’ll leave you with one of my favourite films sequences of falling and getting up, that’s from a place very different from a boxing film. It’s from Richard Attenborough’s ‘Gandhi’.

Whether it’s Dolph Lundgren to Rocky, or the colonialist’s stick to Gandhi, it’s all the same - it’s shit that wants us to stay down when we’re down.

Let’s not do that. Things look a lot better from even a little higher up.

Give me your hand.

Lots of love, dearest Yet Untitler.

V

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