Top tips to renew emotional energy in the age of depletion

Natasha Badhwar

I HAVE been thinking of home again. Of feeling at home. Finding home. Being home. One of the side-effects of the pandemic months and lockdowns has been that I seem to have grown roots. I have always been house-proud but it hasn’t coincided with wanting to be at home. I have been nimble about the idea of home, referring to hotel rooms and other temporary shelters as home with ease. I didn’t need to trudge all the way back to my residential address for comfort. My sleeping bag has served the same purpose when away.

I feel differently now. I love travel the same way as I always have. But I don’t need it right now. I want stillness — both physical and mental. I want to renew my frayed sense of belonging, repair my bond with the earth, sky, air, trees and animals that sustain my life force. I want to stay in one place to make sense of the whirl of distress and confusion that has overwhelmed me recently.

We haven’t had time to process the layers of loss and trauma triggered by the events of the last two years. The high emotion of the countrywide anti-CAA protests led by women was disrupted by violence in north-east Delhi in February 2020. The scenes of mayhem seemed to be playing out live on our social media accounts. We were still reeling under the shock of the violence and its aftermath of displaced people when the announcement of the pandemic and sudden lockdown left us oscillating between the fear of the unknown and the security of having homes where we could be safe.

We watched millions of India’s migrant workers grapple with loss of work, hunger and sudden homelessness. Desperate to survive, they chose the impossible solution of walking thousands of kilometres across the country’s highways to try to reach home in their villages and districts. We witnessed a surge in bigotry and targeting of minority communities as they were held responsible by baseless rumours for spreading Covid-19. Within months, farmers from Punjab and Haryana rose in protest against the new farm laws and sat in defiance on the borders of New Delhi for nearly a year before they received reassurance from the state. The second wave of Covid-19 brought death and devastation into the lives of nearly every Indian, irrespective of our privilege. The hounding of dissenters and civil society activists has left the average Indian confused about what it means to be a democratic nation.

How do we look evil in the eye and call it by its name? Just this week, as I typed this column in fits and starts, bulldozers commissioned by the state were razing homes and livelihoods of people in Jahangirpuri in my own city of Delhi. A week before that, homes in Madhya Pradesh were being demolished. In both instances, Muslims have been targeted selectively after public clashes have been reported between Hindus and Muslims during processions taken out on the Hindu festivals.

It is impossible to keep up with the pace of bad news, leave alone being able to consider what role we should be playing to deaccelerate our society’s descent into chaos. To create a pocket of calm for myself, I made a list of “10 top ideas to avoid having a meltdown in response to mass violence and naked display of hate and apathy in the world around you” and shared it with my friends on Facebook. I encouraged them to add their time-tested ideas in the comments and promised to test their efficacy. In no particular order of priority, my list included these examples:

• Feed the puppies in your lane.
• Read a new book. Get five-six together so there’s always one at arm’s length.
• Read your old books. Take them out from the bookshelf and leave them around everywhere you pause in the day.
• Think of replying to emails and compose smart lines in your head.
• Avoid smartphones.
• Cook (or think about cooking).
• Dance some badass moves when you think you are alone.
• Send cake to friends tweeting incessantly about violence, hate. They need your love.
• Think about calling your mother. Or father.
• Make a plan to be happy on Eid.
• Once a week, have a meltdown. It is mildly cathartic to cry after holding it all in for years, weeks, days, minutes. The theme must have resonated, because soon enough there were over 90 comments, and two ideas that repeated a lot of times were:
• Get off social media
• Nurture plants

Perhaps these two stood out for me also because I neglect both of them. I haven’t taken a social media break for years now and although I love plants, I continue to walk past them without watering them, talking to them and listening to them.

I began to water plants in our garden to keep my promise to try new ideas. It worked. As water poured out from the hose in my hand, washing away dust and making greens glisten, I felt my own head feel cooler. Knots seemed to melt away.

When I browse these crowd-sourced lists again, I realise we are trying to identify things that may seem like physical work, but offer to renew our emotional energy. These are all small acts of nurturance. They are the definition of being at home. Home — where we regain strength and perspective, to be able to take on the world again.

— The writer is a filmmaker & author.

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