Yet Untitled 138 - Speech! Speech! (Part II)

Stuff that needed to be said but I forgot because of one picanté too many

Mar 09, 2025

Detest yet Untitler

What a week! My show has been received by an audience, that too with an emotional response that I could not have imagined even in my more generous dreams. Here’s an example of the kinds of things people have been writing in:

🧘🏽‍♂️Deep breath to ground oneself🧘🏽😱

It’s a real honour to be the sole man in an all-woman creative team for a series drama about young women - a scenario that I don’t regard lightly. I’ve been thinking quite a bit about how I got here, because it’s not something that feels usual. The Buddhist in me of course keeps whispering ‘karma’ inside my head, but even so - Buddhism defines karma as an accumulation of lived experiences from the past dictating the present: it’s all cause and effect. Where’s it come from? What’s the cause?

I’ve been thinking, I’ve been excavating. As you may remember from the previous instalment, I’ve been using speeches as opportunities to make sense of some of these things. Speeches are an effective medium - you’re given license to tap into your emotions and express them as eloquently as you can. You’re expected to engage, be funny and there are so many eyes on you! All this becomes a reason to push yourself; to push the good stuff out.

Speech-cam! All poised to listen while I forget everything I want to say. Mumbai, c. March 2025.

There are challenges, though: sometimes you’re drunk and suddenly someone clinks a glass with a spoon and it’s suddenly time to step forward to speak.

Of course, by then, you’ve forgotten everything you wanted to say!

But thankfully, I have YU and you to tell these things to 😄. Here’s a speech I wanted to give at one of the events around my show’s release. but couldn’t:

Hey everyone,

Even though my being the one man on a team such as this was portended, as I keep telling everyone, by my kindergarten teacher’s prophetic statement in my report card back in 1985 - “Likes to sit with the girls” - I’ve been thinking that there’s definitely more to this. Here’s what I concluded:

I was eleven when I went to an all-boy boarding school for seven years. During this time, I felt I was part of a small tribe of boys who didn’t quite fit in. Most of us were traumatised by an oppressive machismo that seemed to be the law of that land. Some of us were overwhelmed by this oppression, but we helped each other get through those seven years. All through this time, there were those among us who knew there was more to the world than what we were experiencing in this stilted place. I knew this from the world that I had left behind…

…the world where my mother lived.

It was a world I always came back to. In that world, my mother listened to me. She winced when I told her I had been hurt but did not shame me for being weak or vulnerable. She goaded me on, telling me that I was capable of finding my way in that very world that I sometimes wanted to run from. She did not hide her own weaknesses or vulnerabilities from me. She trusted me as friends trust each other. She made me feel like an equal despite the decades of age and experience that set us apart.

As a result, my tribe was always peopled by reflections of her, whether men or women. I sought her strength, her acceptance and her uncompromising love from those around me. I didn't always find it, but thankfully, being born to her, I somehow knew how to give it as well. I tried to do this the best I could, not always successfully. But however much I was able to conduit her qualities through my life, I was able to steer it in directions that felt right.

The world of my mother. Open. Accepting. A place where you could talk. A place where you could breathe. My mother - a woman - gave me my first whole and complete friendship.

There’s little wonder, then, about the company I seek and about the friends I keep.

Thanks for listening.