Loving, Being and Healing March Edition
Shirin Choudhary
Wilting flowers and silly obsessions in this heat of March. The whole world yawns, And I am remembering how to breathe on my own.
March. The month of March is one of transition: from winter to spring, from spring to summer. It is a month of loss and longing. It is a month of learning and unlearning. March 2017, for me, has been a process. It has been a movement. It has been a discovering of spaces - within and without. In more concrete terms: March 2017 is my month of transitioning out of therapy, out of college, and maybe out of this city I have called home all my life. Coping with March required a lot of time and energy on my part. I’m still doing it. I am letting go of some relationships, revisiting some old ones, and making new ones. I am enjoying some of these processes but have also struggled through this month. This zine is me putting my March out there. If this makes you think or feel anything at all, feel free to reach out to me (choudhary.shirin@yahoo.com), and maybe we can talk about love, life and activism in the spring sunshine in this vast city of aching bodies. - Shirin Choudhary, New Delhi, March 2017
(excerpts from my online journal)
2 march 2017 low key depressed and can’t sleep and can’t write. 8 march 2017 feeling a little scared about activism in general now - protests are making me anxious ever since Maurice Nagar. But I have to keep moving. 13 march 2017 not feeling good + wondering why I can’t buy into my own narratives about myself.
16 march 2017 look what a mess i have made of things: pieces of metal twisted together with other metals, wobbly parts of an incomplete 5th class project collecting dust on an old shelf, coagulating rust on this old self.
20 march 2017 today i met a quietude again. a boredom. something i have been missing. it felt good. today i have less words. i have work to do. i have essays to read. it feels good to be back in the midst of things, academics, friends, the breathing space that is sitting in the lawns by yourself between classes and reading your books. today i feel more shirin and less ache.
21 march 2017 1:03 am trying not to give too much brainspace to the things that sting; defining where i stand, for myself.
21 march 2017 sometimes i still don’t feel like i belong in certain spaces, and it takes me time to really get over this feeling, but as long as i keep trying i have to acknowledge my own efforts.
26 march 2017 today we talked about healing. we talked about loss, political and personal. we talked about minority identities and being in a state of politics simply by virtue of these identities that are written in our being. i have much to process and much to reflect on - mostly my role as someone with historical privilege in some sense and historical disadvantage in another sense. i also have to move forward. this has been a month of learning and grieving but i have many things to look forward to and i cannot be stuck in this. march is coming to a close but now is a time for me to grow and be (and be part of) something bigger than this.