Saving me with a book

Dear Natalie Goldberg,


I will never forget how I met you at that cramped Cyber Cafe in Aligang, near the Gulacheen Temple in that graceful city of Lucknow where I lived when I was 16. There shuttling on the internet between online romances, smart quotes, and Post graduate courses( to find a respectable career) I found that online version of Writing Down the Bones. I lived with it many days before I felt a sense that couldn't live without a Hard Copy of that stuff(It really was like dope!). It became my Bible and you became the woman who walked in front of me telling me just how real women walked.


There were so few ideals then for a girl of my size growing up in a city without any considerable distractions of male attention. I held on to you like nothing else would save me. And nothing else did. Not the degrees I took. Not the heady work I did. Nor the Company of Television Heroes I was so enamored by. Barkha Dutt, Rajdeep Sardesai, Sankarshan Thakur, Tarun Tejpal. All of them have lost that slickness in life.Why even real people that I fell in love with did nothing to save me. They all crumbled right in front of my eyes.


In the agony of stony places. In the glint of adoring eyes. In the ennui that lasted and costed me a considerable amount of life...You stayed in my bones. Keeping me strong. I always knew something was gonna grow from it. This writing practice that got into my blood stream gave me the ceremony to mourn my losses. The color to paint blazing colors from the sallow tastes on my tongue. The rhythm that played in my ribs when there were no dances I was dying for. 

Katagiri Roshi The teacher who taught you to watch your monkey mind came to me through you Natalie. I know that man, his straight back, his coldness and wisdom and his smile. I met him on a lot of your pages. I am afraid I fell in love with him too. And I realized how he was just supposed to be a teacher and not a alive presence. I never knew his smell though.( And I know why you kept it from me!) I know all the hamburgers you ate and all the houses you lived in. Your father and your Mom. Your sister and your car. Your divorce too. How did you transcend so many blocks of distance/age/country/culture to hold my attention( AND REVERENCE!!!!) for such a long period of time. Surely you too will pass from my life, wont you?


When I read you I feel I have a life that can be made something of too. You had fallen where I had fallen and you got up looking respectable. I too would. There were no children who had made your existence more profound than mine. There was no soul mate you had met and I had missed out on meeting because of my dumbness. There was no  home where people waited for you, there were no friends which you had which were warmer than mine. We are so same same. Teacher Guru. Mad Women Mad women. Mad women making sense of the nonsense!


You live so far away in Santa Fe in New Mexico. I dont even know where it is! How much does it cost to reach there? How much to just deliver a parcel? Would you mind if I land up outside your door one day? I'll get purple flowers. Just to mark my gratitude. And when those flowers sit on your writing desk..Will you know what you have given to me?

Love and Gratitude
Pearl

PS- I am so proud of myself I haven't married the fly! :)