A love letter to you from India

"Hey Pavini, what've you been doing for so long??"

Dearest,

When I left the U.S. for an undetermined amount of time of solo traveling in India, I thought it would be easy to write to you each week and keep up with my Glitter Joyride posts.

It has been anything but.

Mainly because I am immersed in meeting my basic needs, processing an endless stream of incoming information, and staying out of the way of don't-give-a-fuck cows, thieving monkeys, and Jaipurian shopkeepers determined to empty my wallet of rupees.

But I miss you. I miss writing to you.

India's been, well, a lot.

There has been so much joy but also much hand-wringing.

I’ve learned some new survival skills and resurrected old ones from when I lived in Bulgaria for a couple of years post-communism.

Like how to keep your pants clean while using the good old squat toilet.

For example, I've gotten obsessive about reading reviews for places I might visit: I can now sniff out a good homestay that will meet my needs: must have an electric kettle!

I won't even consider eating somewhere with less than 50 visits documented by other diners. If there is any mention of cockroaches, it's a hard no.

But how are you??

From here, the wave of fear and panic rising from the U.S. looks like a mushroom cloud.

I am worried, about you and me both, and figuring out how to manage my return.

The distance has kept me buffered: it’s been easy to sidestep terror.

LIke come on, how can you legislate the gender experience of humans? It makes me laugh, but tears are in my eyes.

While I am impacted by our collective nervous system, I also have a perspective from the outside.

When my home in Asheville was hit by a hurricane last fall, just after I arrived in India, I felt similarly.

Watching a tragedy unfold from afar is weird.

It hurts, but I don't always feel like I have the right to the first-order grief of it.

And honestly, there is something welcome in the choice to modulate how big my feelings get. Even if I feel a bit guilty.

---

Over two months have passed since I've been able to write to you.

I hope you know I’ve thought about you everyday, sent love and prayers and blessings.

During that time, we've both gone through so much I imagine we are both unrecognizable in some ways.

But know this: I miss your face, your voice, the warm hug of your body.

So what, exactly, have I been doing all this time?

It's a fair question; and I’m happy to be able to share some of what I've gathered.

I have practiced every day.

~In every room I stay in (there have been MANY), I cleanse the space.

Then I construct an altar.

~I sit on the floor and breathe, pray, & chant.

~To quote the eternal light, Erykah Badu, ‘I try a little yoga for a minute.’

~I call out to my protectors and guardians. I honor my ancestors.

~I remember my clear intention for my time in India:

The funny thing about intentions is the layers of surprise they can unfurl.

When I wrote the intention for a lighter existence, I thought I was talking about the heaviness I carry in my heart. But much more has been revealed.

Can I share something I wrote in my journal with you?

To have a lighter existence, one must:

• Shift one's center of gravity to the heart!

• Learn to light from within, glowing the color of candlelight through rose quartz.

• Notice the light in all ways it plays: on water, refracting through smog, pouring through one's eyes each morning.

• Learn to be light-hearted, even during illness and duress.

• Gather light from all the shining places: temples, trees, and bodies of water.

  ---

What have I been doing?

When I was little, I loved a book called Frederick.

It was about a mouse who was a poet.

While the other mice gathered seeds and nuts for winter, Frederick gathered colors, scents, and visions.

He gathered the light of the sun.

The other mice scoffed at Frederick for not gathering food with them.

They berated his foolishness.

But once the food ran out, it was his gathered words and memories that nourished them.

His poetry warmed them, and got them through the collective trauma of winter starvation.

Isn't that the situation now? Collective trauma & the winter of starvation?

Isn't your soul famished, I mean like really fucking ravenous?

Isn't your appetite voracious for beauty, meaning, calm, and connection?

Isn't your lifeblood underfed and undernourished despite the abundance around you?

Sweetheart, it's not your fault.

Our culture is dying from malnourishment.

So yeah, I have been Fredericking.

• I have been gathering the colors, smells, experiences, conversations, graces, generosities, hardships, tears, and connections.

• I have been tasting, smelling, feeling, forgetting, and then remembering how to be me without a rigid identity.

• Half the time, I'm perceived as female, and the other half as male. I like it.

• I've bought many pretty clothes tailored for my body.

• I've developed adornment practices of kohl, perfume, and jewelry as forms of spiritual protection.

• I've been gifted a powerful technique for spiritual hygiene.

I'm trying to gather goodness for us both, beloved.

But that's not all I've been doing.

Traveling last week, I spent the night sleeping on the floor of the All Faith chapel at the Delhi airport.

Around 2 AM, a mother with her young adult daughters entered the space.

She smiled at me, and I bowed my head to her.

They were Muslim and began a ritual format that seemed to be a well-practiced rhythm of obeisance and prayer.

After donning their ritual garb, first, the mother would prostrate herself in Sujūd, followed by her daughters.

Beautiful to watch through half-asleep eyes, they prayed me to sleep.

When I woke around 4, they were asleep, curled around each other.

All of us doing this completely human thing of taking rest, in the most secure place we could find.

I felt safe with them, our shoes snuggling together outside the door.

I’ve been remembering how to be human with others.

---

So what else have I been doing?

Rebuilding faith.

Faith that an organizing principle exists.

That all of it, ALL of it, holds meaning beyond my comprehension.

While my life is profoundly personal, so is everyone's; ultimately, we are more the same than different.

I had forgotten how to look at people and let people see me.

I had become afraid of strangers and their eyes.

How about you?

Do you meet the eyes of those around you and trust that you will be welcomed?

Trust they will not harm you, and if they try, do you trust you have your boundaries, guardians, and rituals on lock that ward off that which does not serve?

At a temple last week, I was doing a private ritual with Ari just outside the temple doors.

I could see the Goddess Siddha Bhairavi within, had already visited Her bearing the gifts I had brought.

I had brought my head low to the cool, wet marble floor, stained my knees red with Her vermillion, and received her blessing.

This is not Siddha Bhairavi because no photos were allowed. This is Mangala Maa. But you get the vibe.

As we sat outside the temple doing our private thing, three Indian women approached, curious about what we were up to.

I looked at them, my heart full of magick and power.

I did not smile.

Neither did they.

I simply let them see me, connected to Her, in my whole, weird, witchy presence.

I looked at them, three women a wee bit strange, on pilgrimage to a temple to a fierce Goddess who is worshipped through wine and blood and meat, way outside of Hindu orthodoxy.

I let the three women see me, and I looked to see them.

What is it to be seen in your full glory?

Who do you let see you that way, without protection, without guarding?

With no false confidence or shields up, not trying to be seen as anything but who you are in that exact moment?

We tried to speak, and did not share a common language.

But yet.

There was something in seeing each other deeply without being friendly, well-socialized, or trying not to be freaky.

Here we all were, five weirdos devoted to Her.

Five devotees who allow our hunger to travel our bodies to far-flung temples in search of… grace? Connection? Magick?

Siddha Bhairavi is said to be She who will convey any blessing you ask for.

What will you request?

But be careful.

---

Two weeks ago, a tuk-tuk driver got clever with me.

Thought he would charge me an extra 100 rupees for some made-up bullshit reason.

Okay, I said.

I will pay you.

He will never know that I continuously tip far beyond 100 rupees.

But not him.

He got just what he demanded.

So be wise in your prayer, and leave space for Her to give you more than you know you need.

---

My beloved, so far away: Are you starving?

In this time of immense turmoil, do you lust for more aliveness?

Is something in you emaciated with hunger, longing for all that you know is lost but cannot name: community, belonging, hope?

I know I am.

My hunger is for connection with Her, the active principle of Life and Creation.

By Her I mean, of course, the Goddess, Kali, Time, the Holy Spirit, call it what you will.

My hunger will not abate.

In the hunger, I find something I can hold onto: yearning.

Yearning drives me to give up all of the habits that keep me from being present.

Yearning for Her helps me be with what is as grace.

Helps shed the layers of protection that seek to insulate me from this moment, just as it is, perfect and imperfect simultaneously.

Because if truly all of this is Her, my suffering is Her wanting to experience suffering.

My pleasure is Her wanting to know pleasure.

Once tripping on mushrooms, I realized that all the cells in my body had their own life.

They were part of me, but also individuals.

Whatever I put into my body, they received.

I imagined my cells, high on shrooms, impacted by my decisions, and me, never ever considering them as beings.

This is how I imagine myself with Maa: I am a cell in her body.

My whole life is actually just a part of a bigger system.

Macro and Micro, fractalling ad infinitum.

---

So what I've been doing all this time, beloved, is learning to Trust again.

Learning to trust meeting the eyes of others.

Learning to trust myself, and know I can meet my basic needs.

Trust that my marriage can withstand extended periods of separation while we each do our own work.

Trust that it is okay, more than okay, to follow the breadcrumbs of Spirit; even when they don't seem cohesive, there is usually a greater plan.

---

I got angry with a taxi driver last week.

I wanted to go to a temple and had it pulled up on Google Maps.

He refused to follow my directions.

I fumed about patriarchy and stupidity for a while, to no avail.

At some point, I just gave in to trust.

Trusted that everything was perfect, just as it was.

Trusted that he was taking me wherever I was supposed to go.

Which, not surprisingly, was the temple where I met the trio of witchy women, saris smeared with sindoor, sparkling in the smoggy yellow sun.