Ramadan

 

I remember describing 2022 as the worst Ramadan of my life. It was the first one back in college after covid. The summer was unbearable and the university (and mess) made no accommodations. Without any way to store food in the room, I was basically fasting most of the day. That passed, and every subsequent Ramadan was easier (each spent in a different part of the world). This year, I find myself back in this part of the country. The summer, of course, is not as advanced. But in every other respect, it is vying with 2022 for the title. One of the reasons I like holding on to this tradition is the feeling you get that you are participating in something universal. An incomprehensibly high number of people – maybe a billion – are engaged in fasting all over the world. But when you fast in Delhi – and when I fasted in Patiala – you could be forgiven for feeling like you were the only person fasting. In Delhi this is obviously untrue, but because I am not living in a visibly Muslim area, and working in a kind of institution that Muslims do not usually get to, I am surrounded by people who seem not to have the faintest idea that a season of fasting is ongoing. It makes a world of difference, the feeling of solidarity from knowing other people are doing the same thing. Despite living in a city with over 2 million Muslims, not even a suggestion of that makes its way to me.

This invisibilising of a large minority in social cultural and professional spaces is a major reason this city – and the country at larger – presents to me as a hostile space. I have one of the most common names in the world. And yet not a classmate or coworker I’ve had in this country shares it. I would also say something similar for being from Kerala, caveated by the fact that they’re a much smaller proportion of this country than Muslims, and still do find representation. But it adds to the feeling of not feeling represented by anything this country projects outwardly. I would not be any less represented in a different country. They might even be less hostile. I remember an occasion I had gone to the immigration authorities in the Netherlands to renew my residence permit. The civil servant on the other side was a Hijabi woman who when she noticed I had studied human right asked me what I thought about the ‘situation’ in Gaza. I was apprehensive about giving strong opinions to someone who held decision making power over whether I could remain in that country. She offered her own opinion first, perhaps in an attempt to be reassuring. It was a surreal experience for me; this clearly immigrant Muslim woman could find herself working in the immigration department. In India, you could travel far and wide and struggle to find a Muslim woman in government employ, headscarf or otherwise. The invisibilisation is so total and unquestioned. We just do not belong.

Don't Come Back

 

Below is the text of an email I sent to a dear friend recently, anonymised and posted here because it belongs in the same space as whatever the other posts represent - a structure of longing.

Dear [Friend 1]

I have been meaning to write this email for months. I’ve told you about it more than once; I’ve told myself many times more. I could not bring myself to do it till now. Sometimes because things got in the way, and others because it felt like a difficult thing to get started with. But today I started reading “The Book of Chameleons”. There is an email in the book which talks mostly about how much the author hates emails. He complains that starting something with “Hi” deprives us of the chance for elaborate greetings and goodbyes; the entire length of his email is shorter than salutations between two dear friends in real life. You know what it reminded me of? Our goodbyes outside your flat in Leiden. Can you imagine the state of your inbox if they had to be put down as emails? There is so much I miss of what I can – without qualification – call the happiest days of my life so far. The walkable city, the cozy cinemas, the absence of cow dung (and cows) on the street. But most of all, I miss having so many loved ones living within reach for the best part of a year.

You know that scene in The Office when Andy wishes there was a way to tell you were in the good old days while you were still living them? I knew I was in the good old days. I knew I would look back on it exactly as I do now. The last time I sent an email – the one addressed to all the mooties – I gave it the character of a goodbye because I knew the good old days were ending. [Friend 2] spends a lot of her time yearning for that brief moment of belongingness Leiden gave her. I get that so much. I despised my undergraduate course, I despise my life now. But during the LLM, I had just a glimpse of how good life can be, how you can be surrounded by love and affection in a way that does not feel suffocating. I went into the Netherlands never having cooked a meal in my life; less than a year later, I hosted friends on Eid (twice!). Just last week, postcards from [Friend 3] and [Friend 2] arrived from [Place 1] and [Place 2] to my village in Kerala. I don’t think a postcard will ever have taken those routes before. Having friends is one of life’s greatest blessings; having friends all over the world is truly indescribable.

I sometimes think about the fact that little trinkets I’ve given you are sitting in [Place 3] – a city I’ve never been to. Tomorrow I will wear to work a shirt that [Friend 4] and her mother picked out for me in [Place 4]. If someone remarks on the shirt, I can say “Oh thank you it’s from [Place 4]”. I cannot describe what it means to me, sitting here in the capital of misery. There is this beautiful Italian movie called ‘Cinema Paradiso’. It is set in a small Italian town. In trying to inspire a little kid to make the most of himself by leaving that little town, one of the main characters says “Don’t fall prey to nostalgia, leave here and never look back.” I don’t think I can follow his advice. I keep looking back: to Leiden, to being a student, to feeling happy and like I belonged. I know these are emotions I will feel again; they have to be. But when I do find a place and people, I know what they will have to measure up against, and I have a feeling they will come up short.

I don’t know what an email version of an awkward and abrupt ending is, but I am ending this by saying we will see each other again before we know it.

With love

Mishal  

 

hole

 

There was a period last year when a few friends would hop on call and play geoguessr together. While we were going through some neighbourhood in Switzerland, one of them remarked how so many of the places we saw were beautiful and it made him realise what a shithole we lived in. I could not even bring myself to laugh; he was just stating a fact. Every thing I do in this city is protect myself against it. An air purifier because the air is poison (a mask outdoors for the same reason), a water purifier because the water is poison, a VPN connection because things are banned arbitrarily, and so on and so forth.

How does a city – and by extension the country – become so hostile and inhospitable? There is a tweet I go back to often, some guy larping as Timothy Clifford said: “The purpose of life of an Indian is to escape India, it can either be done by leaving India physically or figuratively by shifting to a gated community. Once the Indian escapes India, India becomes the best country in the world & requires no improvement.” When I was house-hunting here last month, I found a real nice one-bedroom close to work at a decent rate. The broker tried to sign me up excitedly because I said yes almost immediately. He took one look at my ID and said sorry your name is going to be a problem. It is a story that surprises no one; even the well-meaning can do little more than say they are sorry this is how things are. But this is how things are. There’s no name purifier I can buy to account for your minds being poisoned. Why must I have place for a country that has no place for me?