To a year of beautiful questions

Illustration/Uday Mohite

Having coerced me into cooking a New Year's eve dinner, my friend arrived and immediately said, "Why is everyone putting up posts saying ‘be good to yourself. What does that mean?" I searched hard within me for the answer. But, as when asked "what is the theory of conservation of energy?" by Ms Kalra in Class IX Physics, I was compelled to say "No idea." "Correct," my friend responded grimly and proceeded to demand cocktails.

"Be good to yourself" - who can disagree? Still, it feels like the Devil's trick questions, innocuous but ominous. Does it mean be good to yourself but bad to others? Or, better be good to yourself because there is no chance anyone else will be?

The latter might describe my friends. I called Friend no. 1 with a cheery "Happy new year". "Ya, ok" she replied. "Have you been to the doctor yet?" Ambushed, I mumbled, "I'm going to." "Have you ever been to a doctor in your life? I'm sick of you. Put down the phone and make an appointment." Disgruntled, I called Friend no. 2. "Happy new year," I trilled but was greeted with sarcasm. "Oho, the sun has risen from the West."

"Please understand," I said mournfully. "Meri chutney ban rahi hai. I have never worked so much in my life. My back hurts, I'm sure my brain is swollen. I have no life." Anyone else might have decided to be good to me, but my friends? "Oh please," he said. "Ever since I know you, you are like this. I have never ever seen you not working. You have a mindset problem. Apna algorithm badlo." After several minutes of this rant against me, I decided to revolt. "Bas karo daantna! Happy new year and bye." "Haan theek hai, bye," he replied. "Take three months off and visit me for ten days, otherwise your life will continue to be useless."

In essence these love-scoldings create an emotional context of care that asks you to do your bit in being responsible to yourself, aka good. There is a give and take here which is more poetic than mathematical.

Social media homilies sometimes seem like impersonal neon signs in an isolated landscape. We are encouraged towards ‘self-care' and ‘self-love' and ‘if you don't love yourself how can anyone love you?" - as though the tasks of care and love are individual, not collective. But sometimes it is through being loved and accepted that we also come to love ourselves.

We do live in a tough world. Genocides, surveillance, economic hardships, increasingly abandoned by systems that take but give little in terms of care - education, health, employment. These precarities generate an every man (or identity) for himself culture. Solutions of ‘self' offer an illusion of perfect control, but also a passive acceptance of adversity. Their binary of dependence versus independence, bypasses inter-dependence.

We are encouraged to ask what we owe ourselves - but perhaps that question is too static, too lonesome. Perhaps the dynamic and exciting question could be: what do we owe each other? Yaniki how can we be good to each other? What can we ask for and what will we give? The answers shimmer in solitude and togetherness, in solidarity and self-reflection, love-scoldings and love-notes, in the imperfections of give and take.
Here's to a year of beautiful questions then.

Paromita Vohra is an award-winning Mumbai-based filmmaker, writer and curator working with fiction and non-fiction. Reach her at paromita.vohra@mid-day.com