यशोमती मैया से बोले नंदलाला

One of the things about being love, I'd assumed, was to have a heightened sense of feeling. You're not happy, you're elated. You're not sad, you're drowning in pain and sorrow. you're not missing them, you're pining for them through every cell in your body. That's what pop culture has taught us to expect. Conversely, the corollary goes, you're not in love if you don't feel as intensely.

The last few months I've spent with Noori, and the last three weeks without her, have affected my sense of what being in love means. Yes, Sravani and I keep remarking on how fortunate we are to be spending time with her, how we should cherish every moment because this time will fly away never to come back, how strongly we feel love and protectiveness for her. All that is true. Yet, it isn't a permanent state of being. We still have frustrations, tiredness, confusions, distractions, listlessness. I can't speak for Sravani but there are long hours when I don't think of her. Out of sight is indeed out of mind. So does that mean I'm not in love with her? On the contrary this feels like a truer form of love. Dharani is now such an integral part of the fabric of my life that I don't feel the need to play it up at all times.

Even if there no audience, I'll still care for her. And audience is an indelible part of the equation. I don't know about any of you but I perform - a lot - for an audience, both real and imaginary. Goes without saying myself too- the present me, the future me, and, ocassionally, the past me. Part of the schtick of being a new parent is to communicate to people around you your love for your newborn, your sacrifices, your tirelessness, your embracing of the new, grownup role. I'm not saying this derogatarily or patronisingly. There is a lot of value in that undoubtedly. We live among people and everything we do is playing out in that context. To deny that truth or not see it is, in my opinion, juvenile behaviour. Because not all of it is hypocrisy. It is a real, valuable practice in evolving, calibrating, improving the world in the process. A role we play that is undeniably us but also a learnt, honed performance. I don't believe that there is, somewhere, an inert "true" self underneath the acting that we should and can discover. Consciousness is the strange loop between desire and action.

So ofcourse my love for Noori, me being her నాన్న has exhibitionist aspects; Just like being someone's son, husband, son-in-law. Our words, actions, rhetoric, our narrative is shaped by it. However there is also an undercurrent of feeling that powers the performance, guides it, drives the need to perform- to keep that facet of your life alive and thriving. That undercurrent, in my case, for Noori is, I'm very happy to realise, flowing gloriously (One proxy: The only time I'm not constantly looking at myself on a video call is when I'm looking at her). Me spending all this time with her, especially in July, felt like the most natural thing; Felt, in a way I can't account by the sum of all components, driving all my actions. It's not as if I didn't want to get away and do something else. But when I was away doing that something else, within a few hours, I'd feel the desire to be with her. Nothing radical- just a gentle, insistent, unabating tug. అరె దాన్ని చూస్తే బాగుంటది కదా; జర ముద్దు పెట్టుకుంటె బాగుంటది కదా; అది నాన్న అని పిలిస్తే మస్తుండు కదా. My thoughts would drift away but also come back to her, prodding me to pull up her photos or project them for my mind's eye. పోనీ అలవాటు మాత్రమే అనీ కాదు. Its not a craving but an embracing of my being by her being.

Obviously I've also felt pangs of intense feeling- most notably on my flight from Singapore to Sydney. It was late at night and I was fast asleep when the aeroplane went through noticeable turbulence. Previously when turbulence hit my thoughts would go to Sravani or, more often, Amma. I'd talk to an imaginary entity (a god?) and say, "After all that my mum's been through, please don't let her see me dead". This time, though, unconsciously, in that state of half-sleep, the voice in my head, straightaway, went, "I want to see Noori again. That's all I ask". It felt like the most obvious wish, an unintellectualizable, axiomatic desire. Here's the surprising bit- that wish felt the opposite of intense, it felt like the most natural feeling. This love isn't creating a lot of excitement, its providing something different- succour, سُکُون.

For the most part, my life doesn't feel deprived because of this distance. Its fine, good, content. All perfectly respectable words. Yet I can sense that its missing something alchemical. I can see I'm contradicting myself and the materialist in me is kvetching at the use of this parlance. I genuinely don't believe that what I'm feeling for my child is different to what a chimpanzee or a blue whale would feel for their offspring. There must be a scientific, biochemical explanation for my feelings. But I haven't felt like this before. It only seems to come to the fore with खुद की औलाद.

I know when I'll see her, soon, that I'll be filled with joy, thrill, possessiveness. Though that too will only be for a while. Then my life will continue in all its monotony and I'll get busy with other preoccupations. Yet, then like now, there will be a certain مَہَک in the air when her presence wafts into my consciousness. One kind of love makes your blood rush. Maybe there's another kind that just brings a little smile to your lips when you think of that other person's smiling face as thick clouds waft lazily past the setting sun and stars just start to twinkle.