What is the weight of grief? The volume of tears both shed and held back? The velocity of wind that bears traces of ash? The depth of excavated earth? Prayer-filled recitations? Holding it together in the face of falling apart? Wondering how much was in our hands? What could we have done better? How do we live together now, those of us who survive? Living in another continent, removed from the urgency of what’s unfolding back home as the intensity of cases spreads across regions amid a health-care and governmental crisis, where most lives saved owe their gratitude to civilian generosities, ordinary people stepping in to fill the gaping holes. On the one hand, grave-diggers, crematorium assistants, nurses, doctors, people of various religious denominations assembling to provide relief, oxygen, supplies, hope, kindness... on the other, Brahmanical men peddling in pseudo-science, perpetuating falsehoods, threatening violence, behaving like the thugs they are.

As a marginalised woman from a postcolonial region within India,  I have never felt compelled by the sway of patriotism. In this moment I think primarily of my kinship ties with everyone back home, all victims, in some way or the other, of oppressive state-based bureaucratic and administrative violence. In moments when I feel most alienated from my worlds in Delhi, Mumbai and Goa, I start to recite the names of all the people whose lives matter to me, as if my thinking of them is enough to send a wave of healing energy. This week I managed to pick myself up and re-assemble my body so I could focus better on work I was excited to do. After ten years of ceaseless struggle I finally feel like I am being held professionally. I apply for residencies and actually get considered and/or even accepted. I feel relief because for the last few years I had begun to feel like I’d hit a wall in India. It was becoming difficult to find work that remunerated me decently enough for the time I was investing in it. I was always having to stand up to exploitative systems that insisted on offering only the bare minimum as payment while making you feel like they were doing you a favour. I remember a gallery director once telling me on the phone that despite my being a good writer, I would not be considered for most high-paying writing work because I was ghar ki murgi. The words smarted in my head. Now that I’ve flown the coop, I’m finding what I have to peddle by way of my third-world feminist perspective is crucial. I feel part of larger discourses. I feel heard.