#samaya11

It’s not selfish to think of yourself; it’s called self-care.

Self care is the poetical ramblings and angry doodles that keep you sane through Microbiology

And the insane amount of extra hand washing and Lysol you now use because E.coli seems to beat to it’s own drummer. The invisible mask you wear anyway is finally acceptable to be manifested as the N95 when Viruses & Prions are your new nightmare but also your muse

Self care is jump-roping in your garage or kitchen even though you have 13 assignments due this week in Canvas and toddlers that claim they need right away you every 15 minutes

It is taking that long run right after 1 class before you get to your next class for those weight bearing exercises you learned you will need in AP I.

AP II is Learning how to arm yourself with the knowledge that your body might just betray you, that you can’t stop some genes from expressing but you can learn to respect the systems within you, cooperate and make peace. That your gut is in more control than your brain ever thought.

PSYC 2314 is Knowing your own trigger warnings and releasing yourself from the categories the world has seen fit to put you into. It is appreciation of being defined as a Dandelion

Self care is firmly sticking up for your own self without making your blood pressure rise or theirs.

It is is finally blocking the number of that person who thrives on making snide remarks

So they don’t invade your REM sleep & subconsciously stifle your dreams

Self care is taking ownership of all your faults and imperfections whether born of nature or nurture. Accountability without the self flagellation of shame and dwelling on the past mistakes stored in the hippocampus we take for granted

Self care is taking back your name

And carrying it with pride on your tongue

With all its taste receptors that has in turn

Learned with excitement to adapt to a vegan MIND diet of raw dark leafy greens, antioxidants and omegas without sacrificing flavour, culture and ethics

Self care is forgiveness in degrees

From superficial to deep levels

Lateral to medial

Looking in the mirror in anatomical position

Palms facing the viewer

Fingers free of weapons

knowing that forgiveness does not equal

reconciliation or erase the past

Self care is apologizing not only to the person in the mirror with the new gray hairs and the stretch marks that remained long after the línea nigra disappeared

but to every avatar you have manifested in this lifetime

Including the most insecure prepubescent versions of you at your inner mental core before your developing prefrontal cortex had better cognition

That what you were experiencing was not love but abuse

That fear and anxiety are normal responses to the tribulations they put you through

Self care sounds exhausting

But it allows you the escape

the room to breathe

deep and exhale

Using your intercostals and obliques

Pushing images of past failures

Using your body and your wits

to progress to a better you

Om

Namah

Shivay

You have the majesty

of the brilliant sun

with it's nuturing power.

With just one glance

You warm my heart

and make me glow.

I am a mere flower

upturning my face

towards you,

Craving your rays

to cast down on my body

basking me in your light.

At night, when you are gone I revert

to a secretive bud closed tight waiting

to reveal my true face only to you.

Honeybees during the day dip

to steal the nectar from me

But i don't worry because

this sweet fragrance they seek is

my very devotion of you

created by your first smile

the source

of which is

infinite.

Priya Ramesh Desai, 2012 @samaya11

Our bloodline is cursed

By the angry spirits of ancestors

At least this is what my father insists

As he consults Vedic astrology charts

I claim I don’t believe such nonsense

Yet I do believe in generational trauma,

In vicious cycles that spiral into whirlpools

Of lost ambitions and silent despair

I speak to everyone I meet in blessings

Partly to reverse this spiritual blemish

Let the sins of our Fathers be paid

By the virtues of our Mothers today

The burden is weighted unjustly

But your daughters can right it if you

Acknowledge their blood was never unclean

Support them as equal in measure to sons

@samaya11 2022, Priya Ramesh Desai

Book release coming!Summer2022.

Skinned knees are a blessing

Proof of living deeply in wonder

Your imaginary friend

A gateway to God

Comfort, faith, strength, love

Gems to be found

On the playground

In the back yard

The bike ride to school

You are strong

You are brave

You are patient

You are kind

You are smart

- by Priya Ramesh Desai

I am a geek. I’ve never been good at math but I love the theories and formula. Numbers seem like a universal language to me. In a tipsy topsy world mathematic equations seem comforting in their reliability and isn’t that what the ultimate idea of a God is? I think it was Hafiz or Rabia that said “Anything that comforts is God”.

I ran into mathematician, Kurt Gödel’s theorems years ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_ontological_proof

Gödel's ontological proof is a formal argument by the mathematician Kurt Gödel (1906–1978) for the existence of God. The argument is in a line of development that goes back to Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109). St. Anselm's ontological argument, in its most succinct form, is as follows: "God, by definition, is that for which no greater can be conceived. God exists in the understanding. If God exists in the understanding, we could imagine Him to be greater by existing in reality. Therefore, God must exist." A more elaborate version was given by Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716); this is the version that Gödel studied and attempted to clarify with his ontological argument.

Gödel left a fourteen-point outline of his philosophical beliefs in his papers.[1] Points relevant to the ontological proof include

4. There are other worlds and rational beings of a different and higher kind.

5. The world in which we live is not the only one in which we shall live or have lived.

13. There is a scientific (exact) philosophy and theology, which deals with concepts of the highest abstractness; and this is also most highly fruitful for science.

14. Religions are, for the most part, bad—but religion is not.

In an odd way, it comforted me and inspired this poem:

—

The God Theorem

my Beloved speaks to me in

one-point-six-one-eights , 7-7-1-3s and 8’s.

Do you think that is crazy?

Maybe

madness is just another language of God

as is Math.

i used to search for my Beloved

by gazing the stars for a map to His dwelling.

i used to beg my Beloved for miracles

some divine documentable sign to prove

that He exists.

i found instead there is no proof that He is not.

i tried to find Him using simple Geometry and PreCal

and e-em-cee-squares and string theories of n-10s.

Then, my Beloved called to me one night in a mantra

of exponents.

Now, tell me the highest number.

And name the last digit of Pi.

Count the increments you find between zero-point-zero and one.

And divide any number until there is naught.

X=God.

For Sonny “Sunil” V Desai

02-20-2018. 00:02 Houston, TX

I do not claim to know

How the laws of nature work

How the universe was made

But every mother knows this:

Each contraction of the uterus

Signifies a new universe expanding

Every heartbeat of her child

Will be set in the soundtrack

Of a New Age of Hope

Two minutes past midnight

My universe was restarted

The stars made way and the moon bowed

To a New World of Aquarius

First, there was a breath

Then, a cry to heaven

Oh my baby, my baby

-

I cannot protect you from history

The wars outside these walls

Or inside the hearts of men

But I can promise you this:

Each tomorrow will be yours to create

A new story of humanity

Of compassion and love

You have come into the world to see this:

The weapons fall from the hands of men

Oh I hope, I hope

As they come to realise

No matter the colour or

The creed we profess

We are all brothers and sisters

We are all in this together

-

One day when you are a man

With the hands of your Father

And the eyes of your Mother

My blessing for you my son is this:

Your words will have the power of an army of warriors

Your handshakes will form unbreakable alliances

Your smile will shift the sunlight over the coldest hearts

Your feet will have walked in the footsteps of true leaders.

Oh but if you do not, if you do not

Don’t be disappointed my love

And live Your path and destiny

With all Your intellect and will

And know I will have loved you still

And every breath in your lungs

Since your first breath

Has been the greatest gift.

The Corner Shop Kids

“But why do you need the orange cheese slices on the sandwich if you already have these round pink cheese slices?” She’d ask. My sister had convinced our dear devoutly Hindu lacto-vegetarian and supremely naive granny or “Ma” to make what I called the “haram” sandwiches of Anchor butter, smoked ham and Red Leicester cheese slabs for her and our brother. I as usual, just watched open mouthed at her boldness and feared for our souls.

“You want one too right, Maya?”She’d slyly wink, her green eyes twinkling with mischief knowing full well I didn’t care for eating flesh.

“How thoughtful Dikra” gran cooed at her.

Turning to me, “Khaa, Khaa Maya! khaavanu pun kaam Kartu jaavanu, hambru? granny would admonish in the same breath making the sandwich I’d give away to a sibling on the pretext of being too full.

Poor granny the tricks my siblings and I would play.

Sneaking in alcohol or sweets from the off-license (liquor store) downstairs was their job. I was usually the look out or the one to climb through small spaces like the bathroom window bars when our parents locked us in. Not that we really had to sneak hard if we wanted a drink now that I think about it. Brandy was always available on the pretext of having a sore throat or a stuffy cold.

“It’s the only thing that clears up their symptoms overnight” granny argued with my Father while she stocked Remy Martin in the cupboards for us to have with Coke as a medicine. That with some Disprin tablets and Vick’s Vapour Rub up the nose or plugging our belly buttons were among her go to home remedies for us. Sometimes a bottle of Lucozade for glucose power to soothe a genuine fever or secret hangover vomiting. For someone who believed so strongly in Ayurvedic foods she embraced some very contemporary practices from whichever country she happened to be in.

Our kitchen was tiny and cramped with both a washer and a dryer, a folded wood dining table and chairs up against the glossy deep red Victorian furnace. Granny was so neat, ran such a tight ship, and took so much pride of the religiously scrubbed sink, the gas oven dismantled constantly for proper cleaning, the patterned linoleum floors swept and mopped with such precision. Under the stairs adjacent to the kitchen was the food pantry that we snuck grannys large disk shaped tablets from. The only thing that wasn’t in her medicine cupboard. I never knew exactly what they were for but they were sour orange and fizzy. We also picked at the tamarind packs a little at time cherished for their sticky mouth puckering tartness. Ofcourse our foolishness would attract mice to Ma’s consternation.

Granny’s fixation for cleanliness extended past physical to her focus on internal & psychic exorcism. She was convinced we needed “najar uttarvanu” to keep the evil eye away, to drinking Khadvaat an utterly foul smelling bitter muddy concoction of torture, which Nills was the champ at holding her nose and downing it in one gulp. I always vomited. I never made it past the first sip which convinced granny I was full of sinful thoughts, possibly demons or worse full of parasitic worms that would infect the others eventually. The laxative tablets she tried to make easy for us. They were hard chocolate tabs wrapped in foil. Shay would hide his in the corners of that kitchen for mice to find, cheered on giggling mad by me and my sister. Until we realised one of us girls would be tasked to clean that liquid mice shit up the next morning not darling curly-haired Prince Shay.

One time I was dared to try Ma’s “tunkhi”from her tiny metal box. I had the easiest access to her supplies being trusted to fetch things for her. It was beige tobacco powder we watched her carefully pinch to her nose once a day. I just coughed and lied hard that it was pretty good and they should try it too, so Shay tried it and gagged, Nills had a nose bleed, the reaction suffer from all her life to foods that triggered her.

At night we all slept in the same room. Shailesh and Nila in the top and bottom bunk beds, me in the twin bed with granny between us to stop the fights at bed time with her impossibly long arms and specifically tuned ears. We had taught Ma the little English she knew and along with that our own definitions. So Tia Maria from the label of a liquor bottle we told her meant good night tofits of hysterical giggles when we made her repeat it back to us.

One night Shay & Nills got drunk. Ma and I had gone to sleep already. She convinced my brother to slap granny in her sleep. He did it and she woke up sputtering awake “hu thiyu? Kyon che? Hu juye?”

For years later we would laugh about the story but i never really thought it was funny. I would always wonder if it was a tiny awakening of morals or just jealousy that I wasn’t included.

Tribute to Dipa

The thing with death is

last words weigh heavier

than they were ever meant to.

You read between the lines trying

to coax out some deeper truth

in each syllable or gesture,

a profound understanding

to help you through

the rest of your life.

You, who are the guilty survivor

with no visible scars to show

where your soul was torn in trying

to be that record keeper

and pushing yourself to

hope, hope, hope.

You, who are left behind

to pick up the pieces

of other people’s broken dreams

and the now useless secrets

in the burden of history

You cannot rewrite.

But you can retell it.

You can retell that history

and be a Testament

of love that is tempered

even deeper and stronger

by pain.

In death

there are new beginnings

from the ashes.

So I await the Phoenix

at every sunrise and pray

that this will be the day

I am made not whole,

but simply worthy.

—

Oh Lord,

make me a worthy steward

of the life I am blessed to have

and those responsibilities

you entrust me to bear

Amen.