Unveiling the Wilful Patterns

Whistler's Mother (Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1), Painting by James Abbott McNeill Whistler

A pile of jeans fell on my feet. I bent to pick the lot up. I moved up towards the second rack to keep them again in their place, and my eyes caught the stack of albums on the third rack of the cupboard. I pulled one album from the top. The first photograph showed me holding a plastic knife on a birthday cake with six candles on top, smiling brightly with broken teeth. The next two pages continued with me curiously looking at some gifts and then posing with a red bicycle. The fourth photograph was indeed a surprise. We generally arrange photographs according to a timeline. But this was an exception. My great-grandmother, my grandmother, my mother, and toddler I came out of the album with a candid shot.

My memory with my Nani (grandmother) is quite fond. Her unconditional love for her grandchildren, her worries for the younger ones and for the older ones as well, whatever trivial or serious reason it might be; her special pickle for me—the list is endless. But I could remember hazily my great-grandmother’s cheerful laugh. She used to adore my babbling. She almost crossed her hundredth birthday before she changed her abode away from earth. Suddenly, I saw that my mother’s hand touched the photograph. She smiled; she does that whenever she looks at this photograph.

“This photograph needs a frame; take it out of the album.” She said and drank water from our new terracotta water bottle.

“Mummum, did Boroma (great-grandmother) ever get angry?” I asked her quite hesitantly. I never heard any story of my Boroma’s anger.

“Not really, she used to be very calm in almost every situation. You know, we used to hop around on any tiny matter, but she used to say, “Sit quietly and think properly.” That was her way.”

“Say more about her.”  I sat beside her.

“Hmmm, she was very beautiful, you know that. My Nana (grandfather) passed away at a very young age… due to pox.  It was a kind of pandemic, like now... hmm rather epidemic. He used to work in transport, so you can understand how that caught him. She became a widow in her mid-twenties. Surely, her life wasn’t easy with her two infant children and her own beauty. She had faced a lot. But never could a single person question her dignity, chastity, or maturity. She used to tell me, “Give your mind a thorough revision tour. Analyse every year and cut the unworthy, unsatisfied, unhappy memories. Just keep what serves you, positively.” So modern, right?” My mother gave me a swift pat on my head.

“It’s almost like decluttering. Like minimalism.”

“Probably, yes. She didn’t know these words, but she dealt her entire life in her own way. I often asked her about this method. She used to say, “You’ll never fully allow yourself to dig into your soul. But you need to practice. One day, you’ll get the treasure of happiness from your own story.” She was supremely organised. Physically, mentally, and spiritually. She was like a true devotee of life.”

Our elders had almost given us all the needed clarifications and solutions for our day-to-day lives. We just need to give them some identical names so that we can all match our thoughts positively and effectively. I could feel that my great-grandmother passed on the method of detoxification of mind to her grandchildren—what perhaps we now call mental minimalism. We often see many tools to deal with our mental clutter. One section says to write them; another says to speak it out; and others say it’s nothing or it’s just your cooked-up story; but one thing is pretty clear; it is about us and about our wellbeing; the concern is not absurd.

Minimalism is widely popular. A lump sum amount of the digital population practices it and often shares the experiences on different social media platforms; they mostly capture home décor or physical appearances. No doubt it’s aesthetically pleasing and to some extent economically and environmentally uplifting. But we need certain systems for our souls. We can ask ourselves, “If one day I peek into my soul room, does it look minimal? Or is it ‘decluttered’?” 

The answer may not satisfy each one of us. But as my great-grandmother said, we need ‘practice’. Our practice is ‘Ina’*. We need to unveil the wilful patterns. We need to hear the unheard call of us to us. I remember Rumi’s poetry,

“Indulging our pride, we run after

every fleeting image.         

How odd that being so unimportant

We cultivate such grand illusions.”

We need to rip off what has never served us.    

(*In Sanskrit, Ina (इन).—a. means determined or anything that is powerful.)