Stories
The pandemic has been a time of great pain, loss and collective trauma. It has also been a period of self reflection for most. A time to think about what is truly valuable to them, and to live a life guided by that inner purpose. But in the early days of the pandemic, when all we read about was about death and chaos, I took to reading historic fiction. And reading stories about different time periods when communities lived through war and hardships has been strangely comforting. I don’t know why its been comforting. Perhaps because its a reminder that things will get better, or perhaps that it won't matter in a century. I honestly don’t know whether I’m spiritual or a nihilist. I think its safe to say that I oscillate between the two more often than I would like to.
Two books that have stayed with me and given me immense comfort are Pachinko by Min Jin Lee and Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi. (More books have stayed with me since but when I was writing this piece there were fewer). Both these books carry personal accounts of pain, fear, anxiety and hope whether real or fictional. And I was hooked, almost as though these characters were my friends sharing my sadness while in the real world everyone was trying to put on a brave front and stay optimistic. Sadness is such a lonely feeling. No one really prepares you for that part. No one tells you that when you are being sad, people aren’t going to sit with you to share that sadness without making attempts to fix it or make you feel better. Because sadness is uncomfortable. It is uncomfortable unless you surrender to it. But I digress. Back to the books.
Sunja and the Beck (characters in Pachinko) family’s hardships to gain steady employment and financial sustenance as undocumented Korean immigrants in the colonizer country of Japan is truly devastating to read. Azar (Author of Reading Lolita in Tehran) and her girls’ struggles against an authoritative patriarchal regime of Iran in the early 1980s that subjugates womens participation in politics and society are also just as painful and triggering. Not to mention both these stories are situated amidst raging wars. I juxtapose these two stories not because I read them sequentially but because of how their central themes lie in unpacking the role of identities that determine social capital.
It felt especially comforting to relate to these stories as I went through my own identity crisis. But isn't that so strange, to draw comfort in the tragedy of things. Do we as humans feel a sense of righteousness when we learn about injustices. Almost as though by merely knowing more than those around us, we’re better. And isn’t this a bigger problem than we think it is?
Amartya Sen in his book Identity and Violence talks about the misconception that humans have when talking about identity — that it is a monolith and that there is only one dominant identity to ascribe to. The singular identity is a myth but so hard to elucidate especially when some identities seem to be fundamentally at odds with others.
Amartya Sen questions whether identities then should be less rigid and more fluid. And whether they end up losing their inherent significance as they become more fluid. He concludes that this is not an issue that is intrinsic to the identities but how they are defined by humans, which is often exclusionary in nature. Moreover, he questions whether individuals within society can truly have the autonomy to hold on to multiple potentially “contradictory” identities and whether we truly have the freedom to prioritize which of the identities we want to ascribe value to.
I don’t know if what I’m going through is as much of a crisis as it is a confrontation. A confrontation of my old “identity”. A confrontation of the identity that was given to me by my family and my peers and the society that I grew in. But then again, is confrontation possible without leading to a crisis? Or is crisis an inevitable result of confrontation?
I don’t have answers. I am not seeking answers. Okay maybe I am seeking something. I am seeking the space to just feel. Stories don’t just help transport me to another time or help recount history but they also help me feel. To feel things that I would have trouble feeling otherwise.
~Varsha
