By: Aalam Singh Batth
That sensation of anxiety always comes back, it always comes back to me. The thought of it may not be continuous but it remains inside in a dormant state. It shows itself sporadically even when I feel like I have escaped it. No matter how much I tell myself that I am over it, that I have escaped it, it feels like I am never really free from it. The thing about anxiety is that, here’s no way of knowing that you have truly escaped it, the mere admittance of being free from it, means that it still exists deep within, in a dormant state, like a virus, waiting to come back to life.
No matter how many laps around a swimming pool I did, the sensation would not leave my body, let alone the thought of it. It was as if an intangible sensation became tangible through physical symptoms of the body. One night I told myself that I needed to do ten laps, to clear my mind, to finally escape it after a recent episode. I told myself that ‘the only way to finish is to start, and the only way to start is to live through and to confront it’. I did the ten laps, may not seem like a huge ordeal in an average sized swimming pool, but it had been eight years since I last swam. At the end of it, I was wet and breathless, which may seem great if read alone but when read concurrently with the rest of the text, trust me it’s not. Yes, the anxiety went back but for that I had to indulge myself in a sensation inducing activity that left me breathless and tired. And, of course the relief earned from it was temporal like in every aspect of life. Just like money earned is taxed, the relief earned went back and gave rise to anxiety.
“I think you should stop thinking about it, think about something else, something productive or fun, it will go away.” That’s what I was told over the phone, by a friend living in a completely different timezone. I tried trust me, I did. But, you don’t have to think about anxiety, to induce it, it just happens to come naturally. And, yes little bit of anxiety is normal, but I don’t know how much of it is natural. Maybe, if you don’t have to write about it or do ten laps around a pool, then it’s normal.
Some of my writings come out as a byproduct of anxiety, but anxiety about what? Well the list is long, maybe I’ll have to write a book about it. I could, I should write about it, but this time the sensation of anxiety would not allow me to write. I tried everything, going to cafe’s, put on some music, drinking, abstaining from drinking, doing ten laps around a pool. Nothing worked, it slowly accumulated into a fear of writing, a fear of writing because part of me felt writing about it this time would invoke a sensation stronger than the sensation that stopped me from writing.
So, what does an anxious man-child do, when the only thing he thinks he is good at is taken away from the second good thing that’s somehow inherently installed in him. Let me tell you, he sits and prudes, and he huffs and puffs and he blows the whole house down. At least that’s why I think the wolf tore down those three little pigs house, he was just so done with himself, he just wanted to blow of some steam.
As I was pondering about the multiple layers of interpretation of ‘The Three Little Pigs’, a Kishore Kumar song started playing in a cafe mimicking western sub-urban aesthetics. The part of the song that helped me beat the recently developed anxiety of writing one like this:
Apna hi saya dekh ke
Tum jaane jahaan sharma gae
Abhi to ye pahali manzil hai
Tum to abhi se ghabaraa gae
Mera kya hogaa socho to zara
Haay aise naa aanhen bharaa kijiye
O mere dil ke chain
Chain aae mere dil ko duaa kijiye
(Catching a glimpse of your own shadow,
you blushed with shyness.
This is merely the first milestone;
Yet you are scared already.
Just think for a moment—what will become of me?
Oh, please do not sigh like that.
Oh, the solace of my heart—
Pray that peace may finally come to my soul.)
I don’t know about anxiety but that moment the sensation of writing came back to me. That cafe was the last place where I could have even fathomed listening to a Kishore Kumar song. It’s like doing yoga during a rave party inside of a yoga studio, it would be hilarious. Goodbye, Vinyasa, Ashtanga or meditative yoga. And hello, techno-gothic drug induced yoga, a perfect blend of 1969 hippie culture and 2026 techno beats.
