Review of 'Tangerine: How to Read the Upanishads Without Giving Up Coffee; by Namita Devidayal
Mohan Gulrajani
From the memoir: How a writer went looking for knowledge after life’s plans went awry
An excerpt from ‘Tangerine: How to Read the Upanishads Without Giving Up Coffee’, by Namita Devidayal.
Author Namita Devidayal.
So, how did I find myself on the banks of the Ganga on my birthday? And why did I come to pay heed to this unusual stream of knowledge that flowed down through the centuries like the river?
Let me rewind a little.
I was happily ensconced in the costume drama of life in Mumbai, surrounded by people wearing brilliant disguises designed to attract applause. The goals had been set early – we were cheered on to win the lemon-and-spoon race, score the best marks in school, land the right job, cultivate a personality, find a partner, acquire a home, a second home … The list went on and on. And we would repeat the cycle on autopilot with our children.
I, too, had learnt to curate my life intelligently, with all the requisite masks and costumes. I went to the right schools and colleges. I had a rocking career as a journalist with The Times of India and was a published author; my adorable young son and I were cocooned amidst a warm extended family and had wonderful friends.
For various reasons, my husband – let’s call him P – and I lived in separate homes after about ten years of marriage, though we never gave up on our friendship and love for each other. I carried on with life, putting on more masks, gathering awards and feeling fine. Mostly. But every so often, when I was alone, away from the chatter, I felt different. Gradually, grudgingly, I began to acknowledge that I was living with a chronic undertow of melancholy that lapped back and forth. It was like having a toothache that you learn to ignore, live with, and expertly camouflage. I was irritated that I had to learn how to pay bills online. I was overwhelmed by the responsibility of raising a child on my own. Most of all, I felt heartbroken. Alone.
I should have been happy, but I was not. I couldn’t understand why my intellect and my emotions were misaligned, like twin sisters not on talking terms. It baffled me. My friends would exchange glances every time I spaced out mid-sentence, a wobbly coping mechanism for my almost-depression.
Basically, my life was not going according to plan. Wait, let me clarify that – it was not going according to my plan. I didn’t know then that there might be a bigger master plan.
At some point during our separation, P and I had decided to file for divorce. It was logical. It was amicable. But the thing about divorce is that no matter what the reason or who initiates it, it can be emotionally wrenching.
I braced myself for the day when we had to show up at the Family Court in a dystopian, treeless suburb of Mumbai. The court building’s leprous walls and indifferent architecture offered little solace to the traumatised. Long waits and the absence of a decent canteen made it worse. But we stepped outside onto a broken pavement for chai and cigarettes, and managed to laugh at each other’s jokes, pretending that nothing was going to change.
At one point, P turned his back to me to check a phone message, the beep a chime of disharmony between us. I knew then that, underneath the mirth, I was feeling deep despair, and that I would need my close friends to prop me up, so I sent out a few plaintive messages and quickly organised a “divorce party” for later that evening.
It happened to be Karva Chauth that day. My best friend messaged to say that she would make it for the evening but would have to rush up to the terrace to look at the moon through a sieve. My friend was fasting for her husband’s longevity, while I was closing the door on a ritual that I didn’t even believe in. Besides, that day, I wanted my husband dead. I certainly did not want him to live long and enjoy himself while I did bus stop duty and attended couples’ dinners solo. I suddenly felt enraged and hurt and a little fearful.
Our common divorce lawyer was irked with us because we had started the divorce proceedings some years back but never followed through. Finally, today, the case would be closed, and she could get her full fee. She sat patiently with us in the crowded waiting room filled with all kinds of people, while I distracted myself by making up imaginary stories about each one’s reasons for breaking up. We eventually walked into the little courtroom where a judge – a tiny woman who wore her hair in a low bun – told us, “Sorry, this divorce cannot happen right now.”
The judge had rejected the divorce on a technical point and that was that. We were surprised. Then we started laughing. The lawyer could not believe it – we were among the oddest clients she had represented, and she had seen her fair share of contentious fools battling over airline miles and overpriced art. The two of us didn’t even seem to want the divorce. She shrugged, P shrugged, I shrugged, and we went our separate ways. But I didn’t cancel my divorce-cum-Karva Chauth party. The paneer and prawns had already been made.
That day was a reality check. Clearly, not everything goes according to plan. Or, well, everything does go according to plan, but the universe’s plan is way more incredible and intricate than our individual minds can fathom.
Those years were difficult. My son C was young and vulnerable. There were days when I propped myself up to be present for him and to pre-empt my acute self-absorption from crushing us both. I felt sad every time he felt sad, or maybe he wasn’t even sad and I was projecting my own sadness onto him. I don’t know. Parenting is a strange game that comes with no manual.
I’ll never forget these words that emerged from the child’s mouth when he was six or seven: “I happened because you and Papu came together, and now y’all are not together, so do I still exist?” I cannot remember what my garbled response was, but I do remember feeling a bolt of lacerating pain. Had I failed my child? Had I failed myself?
The perfect world that I had curated around me was not working the way I had thought it would. For a while, I felt like I was living the anxiety dream where you are endlessly late for an exam. I began to realise that I had to repair something within, not just rely on external circumstances and insidious reward systems. I started doing yoga regularly. I went for therapy. Tentatively, grudgingly, I turned to various self-help practices – all of which I had once smugly thought were not for me.
I didn’t get to the point of picking tarot cards or meeting dodgy astrologers. The most out-of-character move I made at the time was going to a hypnotherapist, who tried her best to induce me to walk metaphorically down some stairs into the garden of my subconscious. Despite her expert efforts, I just couldn’t travel “down”, let alone reach any greenery; it was all vaguely comical. She advised me to retreat for a while into nature to open and release the clutter that was blocking my interior road maps. I had to Marie Kondo my mind. That was the only way out.
I described my non-garden moment to a friend who worked on alternative healing modules. He went online and found me an Ayurvedic centre overlooking the vast and calming Mulshi Lake a few hours’ drive from Mumbai. It was going to be my Walden Pond.
I went there for two weeks to detox mind and body, to stare at the water and meditate on falling leaves and do little else; doing is so often a distraction from being. It was the first time I was giving my brain a short sabbatical from its habitual egocentric excursions, going round and round without getting anywhere new. It was also the first time I was taking a different route, trusting something beyond the rational mind, something that would help me stop feeling low.
But nothing in life is random.
I did not know then that this lingering thread of sadness would become an inflection point. It sent me looking for answers. My melancholic state had been triggered by an external event but ended up scratching at the scab of an emptiness within that had perhaps always been there, always looking to be temporarily filled. I could no longer rely on the props that I had so carefully set up around me. One of them had collapsed, now the whole structure was teetering.
The slow burn of gloom helped me realise that my intellect or Ivy League education or wealth or relationships may not always help me control the outcomes. Sorrow, untimely death, the many confounding situations that contradict everything you assumed to be true – nothing I possessed helped me understand all this. Why do bad things happen to good people? Why do even highly successful people feel an emptiness, a sudden sense of terror? How is it that we all know that death is inevitable but live our lives as if it will never happen? What are those unseen factors that drive all things, including what some call coincidences and others call miracles? These are questions that people have been asking for millennia. Now, I too wanted some answers.
Excerpted with permission from Tangerine: How to Read the Upanishads Without Giving Up Coffee, Namita Devidayal, Westland.
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Professor (Dr.) M. L. Gulrajani F.S.D.C. (UK)
Former Professor and Dean (I.R&D), IIT Delhi
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