Ekta Kumar's Blog

Is it love. How do you truly, really ever know?Questions like these, have impossible answers. Which is why we turn to poetry. Because poems are not careful.

What is most comforting about time is that things keep changing, we keep changing.

The desire to dress up and become someone else is one of the oldest human impulses. Which is why we crawl on the floor swishing our tails, and sail mighty oceans with feathers in our hair.

Lizard brain is the more primal, less thinking part of us. The part that hums with our deepest emotions and drives our most basic instincts. The lizard brain is how we sense the world, feel the edge of danger, the ache of longing and learn to survive. It is here that reason, logic and arguments are cast aside, and we learn to listen to our heart.

Freedom lies inside our heads.

The gendered identity of mountains is shaped by stories, symbols and cultural norms. Do you see mountains as men?

Khajuraho - men and women, in their splendid poses - fighting, playing, copulating and ignoring each other.

Khajuraho - men and women, in their splendid poses - fighting, playing, copulating and ignoring each other.

"Touch is the first language of love." – Unknown

Talking is hard. Too many words. Saying too much, or nothing at all. Long winded sentences, tangled into each other. Silent questions. Undecided pauses. Hurried explanations tumbling out of open mouths. Misshapen thoughts, spoken in haste.

How to make sense out of all of this?

Perhaps we should kiss instead.

When feet gently lift off the floor, and bodies curve to find each other. Warm mouths meet, and we softly float in the air.

There is silence.

No words are needed anymore.

This edition of my newsletter ‘Strange Ordinary days’ is prompted by Marc Chagall’s painting. In his autobiography ‘My Life,’ Chagall writes, ‘her silence is mine, her eyes mine.’

"In ambiguity, we can find infinite possibilities." - Anonymous

I like turquoise, because of the confusion around it. It is both green and blue. Ambiguity erases borders, and gives us the freedom to choose. Green or blue, there is no right or wrong answer. That is why I like turquoise.

But.

Mona Lisa (altered) - Leonardo da Vinci

Blue in the gemstone comes from copper, and green, is from iron. I’d like to believe that blue comes from the deep oceans, and the green from the land. But turquoise doesn’t belong to me. Colours are not possessions. Colour is energy. They are light waves, mathematically defined by the length of a wavelength. And I can’t catch light. On canvas, colours misbehave, blue tends to push out the green. And turquoise itself changes its shade, over time it shifts. Which is why, if you really think about it, the answer doesn’t matter. Our choices are irrelevant.

 

Mona Lisa (altered) - Leonardo da Vinci

But of course, we still choose, because making a choice is a fundamental human trait. That is how we define our lives, shape our identities and our future.

 

However, taking a decision is often hard. It comes with the fear of making a wrong move. It is tainted with doubt, regret and the desire to please someone else. Every time we pick a side, it has consequences!

The Confusion of the Tongues - Gustave Dor e

All of this can get very confusing. In Zen mode, choices seem irrelevant. In goddess mode, I slay. As a human being, I am afraid. Which is why I keep telling myself, choices are empowering, as long as we don’t attach too much importance to them. 

And also that turquoise, is just an ornament.