jaadu hai.

I like it when weather happens.

Oh, yes! The delays! The delays! How dreadful. Let’s complain as if somehow this pain shouldn’t touch us. As if somehow we should be free from this pain. I like that the weather annoys us. I like it that it leaves us troubled. Because there is pain otherwise, and there are troubles otherwise. Today they are ours, too.

I like it when weather happens because it reminds us that we are not in control of all the things. That the wheels of the universe spin with or without us. The gears still churn. Look at us. We can compound concrete into tall buildings. We can bend electric currents to our wills. We can send messages from one round corner of our earth to the other. Look at all the systems and nations we have built.

And then there is the weather. Here to remind us again. I like this reminder that the weather affords me.

And how odd it is the world that we have created. How odd it is that we will toil and tremble through this weather to get to work. How odd it is that we build schools like prisons and demand attendance over learning. How odd is it that amidst all this the world that we have created won’t allow us to press pause and take a breath. To say, hey, let’s go down to the communal place with loved ones and strangers, let’s share stories and bake cakes.

We didn’t need the weather to trouble us. We were already there.

I just came across this letter by Roald Dahl encouraging the Brits to get their children immunised. I’ll reproduce it here before my thoughts on it:

Measles: A Dangerous Illness

Olivia, my eldest daughter, caught measles when she was seven years old. As the illness took its usual course I can remember reading to her often in bed and not feeling particularly alarmed about it. Then one morning, when she was well on the road to recovery, I was sitting on her bed showing her how to fashion little animals out of coloured pipe-cleaners, and when it came to her turn to make one herself, I noticed that her fingers and her mind were not working together and she couldn’t do anything.

“Are you feeling all right?” I asked her.

“I feel all sleepy,” she said.

In an hour, she was unconscious. In twelve hours she was dead.

The measles had turned into a terrible thing called measles encephalitis and there was nothing the doctors could do to save her. That was twenty-four years ago in 1962, but even now, if a child with measles happens to develop the same deadly reaction from measles as Olivia did, there would still be nothing the doctors could do to help her.

On the other hand, there is today something that parents can do to make sure that this sort of tragedy does not happen to a child of theirs. They can insist that their child is immunised against measles. I was unable to do that for Olivia in 1962 because in those days a reliable measles vaccine had not been discovered. Today a good and safe vaccine is available to every family and all you have to do is to ask your doctor to administer it.

It is not yet generally accepted that measles can be a dangerous illness. Believe me, it is. In my opinion parents who now refuse to have their children immunised are putting the lives of those children at risk. In America, where measles immunisation is compulsory, measles like smallpox, has been virtually wiped out.

Here in Britain, because so many parents refuse, either out of obstinacy or ignorance or fear, to allow their children to be immunised, we still have a hundred thousand cases of measles every year. Out of those, more than 10,000 will suffer side effects of one kind or another. At least 10,000 will develop ear or chest infections. About 20 will die.

LET THAT SINK IN.

Every year around 20 children will die in Britain from measles.

So what about the risks that your children will run from being immunised?

They are almost non-existent. Listen to this. In a district of around 300,000 people, there will be only one child every 250 years who will develop serious side effects from measles immunisation! That is about a million to one chance. I should think there would be more chance of your child choking to death on a chocolate bar than of becoming seriously ill from a measles immunisation.

So what on earth are you worrying about? It really is almost a crime to allow your child to go unimmunised.

The ideal time to have it done is at 13 months, but it is never too late. All school-children who have not yet had a measles immunisation should beg their parents to arrange for them to have one as soon as possible.

Incidentally, I dedicated two of my books to Olivia, the first was ‘James and the Giant Peach’. That was when she was still alive. The second was ‘The BFG’, dedicated to her memory after she had died from measles. You will see her name at the beginning of each of these books. And I know how happy she would be if only she could know that her death had helped to save a good deal of illness and death among other children.

My thoughts aren’t about vaccination and the discussions around that. Vaccinate, of course.

As horrific as it is, my thoughts aren’t about the death of Dahl’s daughter either. My thoughts are about him writing this letter in light of her death. About him recalling that moment. I did some more digging and after his death they found a notebook in one of his drawers titled: Olivia. In this notebook he recounts the moments at the hospital where he learned about his daughter’s death.

This has me shaken. I want to know his mindset as he was writing these things. As he was recalling those moments. What was his emotional state as he churned thoughts into words and wove them into sentences? What was it moments before and moments after?

I attended the funeral of a friend’s brother a few years ago. He was in his late teens or early twenties. It was an open casket. The mother spent most of her time sitting beside the casket and crying. The father calmly greeted those who attended. He was thanking them for coming. The sisters doing the same.

My knees felt weak looking at the body lying in the casket. I had never seen a lifeless body before.

The funeral is one thing, but I want to know what was going through the family’s minds as they were preparing for the funeral. As they were choosing what to wear. Their thoughts the night before. The morning shower. The drive over. The moments that approach the moment.

Those moments have me shaken.

I just might try my hand at writing somethings here and there again.

ahista ahista.

walking along the annex at night,
piercing wind against my face,
i looked towards the sky
mistaking every glowing bulb
atop every street light
for the moon.

I am so in love with reality. Both when it is good and bad to me. I am not high on life, but I am high on the notion of living. Both when it is painful and when it is delightful.

Reality has a texture. It has a sense to it that I can sense. I can run my fingers against the edges of reality and just take it in.

I accept and love reality for what it is.

It is, indeed, this relationship with reality that gives me a great appreciation for it. It gets me through the rough and easy times. It helps me create these times. That is where I want to be. A part of creating the times around me.

I accept and love reality for what I can make it.

The world is so beautiful.
So beautiful.
So beautiful.

I feel like a tape recorder on repeat talking about the book making process. But it can be quite consuming and it occupies your mind for a while. Once you’ve been through it, you might think, “Hey, I did this! This is something I can do.” So you plan to do more. But in the process you realize how tedious and repetitive the process is. It’s one thing to do the writing and pass off a manuscript to people who can pretty it up, do the layouts, design the book itself. It’s a whole other thing to do all of the above.

You might think, why isn’t everyone doing this? Then you realize the process becomes daunting. The writing process itself, but then the putting everything together process, too. If you’re submitting the writings to publishers you have to go through the painstaking process of applying, waiting, then possibly being rejected. Now you have to reel off the rejections and apply to other places and repeat until something hits. Even after acceptance, the process progresses at a snail’s pace. You have to wait months to years before you can see a physical copy.

Self-publishing makes the process a lot more tangible. You’re seeing a physical copy (potentially) within a few weeks of finishing the layout, and book design etc. The layout and design is quite trying. You just have to keep at it, bit by bit. You need to make quick decisions, knowing that you will come back to some and some you will forget. But moving forward is more important than deliberations. The pauses cause paralysis. Chipping away is the way. A moment here and a moment there. Then you repeat, once you have something you can review, revise, rethink. You realize that you have something. Something is better than the thought of something. Something you can work with is golden. It is silk against your skin. Something is why you slug away.

I had wanted to (self-)publish two books last year. I was able to slug away at just one. Still. One is something.

I hope to publish two books this year. I hope to walk away with something.