I am not in fear of loneliness
For I am protected by it from getting hurt,
I am scared of your cruel gaze
That can’t see a blooming flower in the dirt
I began to read at the retreat centre. This was my way of defying what I did not like there. I developed an inexplicable fascination for the English language. The mere sound of it transported me to a world I eagerly wanted to be in, the land of cold and snow. So far, I had never had the privilege of owning a book, nor had the time to sit with it and enter into the world of words. My life had just not been like that. To spend money on books was simply not something my family could have ever afforded. But here, amid the stillness of this retreat centre, I encountered books.
The majority of the books that I found here were published and printed in England. Their scent was foreign. They were published by Windhorse Publications, a publication founded and managed by TBM members in England. All the books I laid my hands on were authored by white, English members of TBM.
I loved the smell of those pages and their covers. I felt elated, merely thinking that they came from England. In those books, I smelled England. Since Sangharakshita (Bhante) was the founder of this sect as well as an illustrious writer and poet, it was impossible not to read him, if you were interested in reading, while being in this sect. I read his autobiography, his memoirs and his poems. I also read his books on Buddhism. These were my initiation into reading. I was naive as a reader. But even if I was naive, what I was reading was deep meditation on life and living. At this time, he was the first author whom I read who had an impact on how I thought about life. Throughout his books, life was present as a subject, as a principle, not as object or practical. Man was present in his book, but society was largely absent. I related to the man he has depicted in his books; but the society in which I grew up, the society which had defined and continued to define me, affecting me, was curiously invisible. Because of his books, I began to see life as a subject, same across societies, countries and continents. His books taught me to simply believe, whereas what people like me needed to learn from books was to question.
Because all I was reading during this time was in English, I began to get a taste of this language. English was being dissolved like a drug on my tongue. I liked the hallucination this language was providing me, in which none of my caste-realities were visible to me. The books and the propaganda of TBM were affecting me in many ways. Maybe out of instinct or some subconscious voice, I have avoided, even silently resisted, reading anything in Marathi. Maybe because reading Marathi meant reading life around me. And the life around me was inevitably painful and full of bitter truths. I sought an escape from this. In these English books, I found it, and I savoured it like a drug. Every drug has its own language. When you consume it, it speaks through you. But language as a drug is a two-edged sword. At this time, this drug called English was shaping my mind to express my feelings and emotions through it. I was consuming its vocabulary and its sound.
*
When loneliness is widespread in life, we accept illusions more quickly than reality. Because in illusions, we find the love and acceptance that is denied to us in reality. In these words, I summarize my time in the retreat centre. Loneliness creates a deficit of love. With this deficit, one can become so vulnerable that we find love where actually hurt awaits. But again, driven by instinct, one can hardly come to this realization until one is hurt. Seven kilometres away from the retreat centre to the south, there was a village called Seloo. To access the market or buy groceries, we had to go there every week. It had a small internet cafe. In 2007–08, I opened my Facebook account for the first time. Then I started adding white English TBM members to my Facebook account. It was during this time that I randomly added Carol, a Dhammamitra who was then associated with the Sheffield Buddhist Centre in England. TBM was the common factor between us, nothing else. It was my fascination for the English life and people I had seen in movies that led me to her profile, and I, without thinking for a second, added her. What was pushing me to do what I was doing? I did not have any inkling of it. The only thing that concerned me then was if it helped me feel the sense of being heard or accepted. Besides, it was an age when sexuality is the director of our actions, but we hardly see its face. Also, what I was reading at this time was silently affecting my emotional world. The imagination of the English world was growing under my skin. Do words have potential to create desire in you for the distant world? I think they do. They did to me. How could they not, when I intended to shun the darkness next to me?
Yogesh Maitreya
Excerpted with permission from Yogesh Maitreya’s soon-to-be-released memoir Water in a Broken Pot, published by Penguin India. Yogesh is a writer, poet, the founder and editor of Panther’s Paw publication that is dedicated to publishing literature by Dalit-Bahujan writers in English and as translations from other languages.
Water in a Broken Pot will be released at Champaca Bookstore, Bengaluru at 5 pm, Saturday, April 15, 2023