Arriving at a new beginning

I am often afraid of the cringe factor that is inevitable when you read your own writing from centuries ago. Representation pic

It's a very ghostly feeling to flip through the pages of an old diary whose existence you had completely erased from your consciousness and suddenly stumble upon a moment of clarity you're surprised you had ever arrived upon. Each time I am home, whether in Mumbai or Goa, my mother is always after me to get rid of the fossils of my girlhood, adolescence and college years. I am always eager to acquiesce, but finding time feels challenging. Or perhaps I am always putting it off because I don't feel ready to be haunted by the memories of those wonder years. I am often afraid of the cringe factor that is inevitable when you read your own writing from centuries ago and recognise traces of pretension or elements of your aspiration towards a certain style. I can usually tell who I was reading at the time, whose writing was influencing my own.

One of two diaries I found most recently had a cover with a calligraphic rendition of a poem I had written alongside a photograph of me. The poem had a self-affirming tone that reflected my desire to revel in my own beauty. At the time I had felt very proud about it, but now I would be hard-pressed to bandy it about. Still, it contained a delight in my body and its eccentricities that I clearly lost along the way. The first page of the diary had an excerpt - again in calligraphy - from Jack Kerouac's Vanity of Duluoz. Flipping through it brought back vivid memories of reading the book at various spots at St. Xavier's College during my second year as an undergraduate, when we were studying American literature. I continued browsing until I suddenly came upon an entry in which I wrote about how a moment which was then my present that felt like the beginning of my life. I mentioned how my then boyfriend had said that every beginning has a before. I mused about what mine might then have been. I felt struck by the naked enthusiasm in my observation. Reading it returned me to that feeling of being at the before of the beginning and I felt reunited with those vulnerable and raw fragments of myself.

On the last page of the other diary, I found the hand-written draft of the resignation letter while at Time Out Mumbai. I had been told that a replacement for me was already being sought. I was offered the opportunity to resign and keep my dignity. I still remember how shattered I felt then - being told how terrible I was as a journalist, how I lacked professionalism and how the editors no longer had patience with me, how they had expected better. I remember trying hard not to internalise that rejection. My parents were unbelievably supportive of me at the time. They held me in a way that felt almost unexpected, showing me how much they genuinely believed in me and knew that the circumstance I found myself in was not my fault.

That was almost 15 years ago. From the vantage point of today, I feel humbled by my own trajectory. It goes to show you how pointless it is to base one's career decisions on the judgements of others. I learned the hard way that sometimes, when people choose not to see your brilliance and your potential, it is because of their own myopia and doesn't always mean you are to blame. Every day I wonder what my life would have been if I had access to the kind of education that empowers you and enables your strengths. What if I had been taught maths in a way that made the subject relatable? What if I had been encouraged to speak Marathi in a way that engaged my faculties? What would my life look like?

I don't have any regrets about how things have come to pass for me. If anything, looking back, I am able to see how I chose to place faith in myself even when the odds were stacked against me. I no longer even worry about my legacy. I feel I have done enough. I continue to serve but I no longer feel I have anything to prove to anyone. It is liberating to arrive at such a place. Am I now at the threshold of a new beginning?

Deliberating on the life and times of Everywoman, Rosalyn D'Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She tweets @RosaParx
Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper.