Rest weary traveller in the twilight mist of the glade
Pause upon the rings of a fallen tree as the daylight slowly fades
Unburden your back of the stick and bundle you carry with glee
For you cannot know its true weight while you are unable to set it free

I know you have carried it far, this bundle you treasure
Full of shiny objects gathered for good measure
Hard won trinkets I’m sure, yet lacking in substance
For they will tarnish with time and become a weightless existence

This stick, however, which has served you so well,
To ferry your riches after the mad rush to buy and sell.
It has been your companion through countless terrains of sludge
Your leaning post on days when tired limbs no longer budge

I will meet you in the glade, fellow traveller of the night
And ask how often you have used that stick, so deceptively light
To cane and beat into the pores of your skin
Such stories of guilt and shame inherited from your kin

Have you not suffered as one must, for duty and gain
The cruelty of vultures clawing deep into your pain
And I will say to you, nay, I will implore
Calm your beating heart and witness all that it endures

Breathe!

Breathe in the gentle sunlight that swirls and eddies from the East
Listen to the sound of the cool wind as it whispers through Nature’s feast
Sometimes quiet and melancholy, or rushing loud with a whoosh through the reeds
Feel the texture of its breath lifting away the veils of power and greed

Breathe!

Allow breath to seep and burrow into your flesh
To excavate the darkness and unbraid its solidified mesh
Give breath your tears, which have drowned in lakes and floods
In exchange for a kiss, an embrace, a cherished gaze from your beloved.

The first self portrait I painted was in sixth form college, aged eighteen. A three-colour painting in blue, green and white of a sad and pensive young woman seated on the floor, her head and unkempt long black curls laying at an angle on one raised knee, looking into a mirror. At home, there was no study desk, so large drawings and artwork had to be done on the dining room table or on the floor. I did not paint another self portrait for almost thirty years, until I joined a weekly art class in a small French village, when I used photographs and found images to create a series of three self portraits in oil, titled Fear, Guilt and Rage.

In the two years I studied figure and portrait at art school in London, I’ve done several self portrait drawings and etchings, and I’ve noticed that I do not like to look at myself in the mirror for long periods of time, even after the initial discomfort of staring into my own eyes dissipates and my attention is wholly focused on the drawing. I prefer to draw and paint other people, attend to someone outside of my small, insular mind-world. To be in a room with a life model, who is willing to keep still and be intently observed for many hours feels an incredible privilege. I have an abundance of time to measure and draw, mix paints and mediums, experiment with composition, colour and scale, explore light and shadow, all in the search of that elusive magic; to create a masterpiece.

My desire to tell stories underpins everything that drives my art. It has always been there. In the first human tribes who told stories around a fire, in my childhood obsession for Bollywood films, in the poems I wrote as a teenager, and in the characters I created to inhabit and move through the buildings I designed. Coaching is an extension of this desire in making space for clients to express their own life stories.

The human experiential realm is the pounding heart of all my creative endeavour, and I believed that portraiture could be a direct thread into the web of another human life. Bypassing the filter of words and language, I wanted to render in paint memories of joy, happiness, love, and pain, elements of history, family, and education. To paint the story of a life model that is etched into the creases and wrinkles and folds of the flesh. That singular alchemy of forces which combine to create a unique human individual.

Yet the more portraits I paint, I cannot help but think that I am moving further and further away from the tale I intend to tell. The model sits in a chair, sometimes with background hangings or with various objects, fruit or flowers added to compose a context. As I observe and draw and mix paints, I am wholly engaged in the task at hand; the neutral stance of my body, the intuitive communication between my eyes and fingers that move brush and paint within the parallel world of the canvas. I do not notice that in her unnaturally still pose, my model has in fact become a still life. And as I work to gauge how much blue, red, light, dark, shape, tone, the stillness creates a distance between me and my model subject. For even though I know that some artists converse with their models while they paint, I am not able to attend to the alternate world of my canvas and the human dimension simultaneously. There forms a crack in the ground between me and she, a fissure delineating a vast distance, which thrusts my arrogance into my own face. My finished painting may have a semblance of physical likeness, but how dare I imagine that I could tell her story?

To observe and paint another’s face and skin and torso and limbs is to capture nothing essential of who that individual really is. The niceties of small talk does not even scratch the surface, because without the same sustained attentiveness that I give to my painted world, I cannot know anything of my model’s life story; where and how she was raised, whether she has siblings, what her favourite subjects at school were, how she experienced her first love, and loss, her previous jobs, and secret fears. In truth, I know nothing of the story I had desired to tell.

In all the hours and days I have been painting, I have merely been looking into a mirror, perceiving and interpreting my own story onto another’s physicality. A kind of obfuscated self portrait, I suppose. It seems impossible to truly paint her story when I cannot stand in two worlds at the same time. For I cannot paint and communicate in our one sharedi medium, words and language, at the same time. In conversation, it is necessary to listen. Really listen. Which requires an engagement of all my senses to be present to this living, breathing human, who is in constant motion.

She is not a still life. And neither is her story. Thus the dilemma of painting a portrait goes on.

I step into the flat and the first thing I feel is the silence. Not heavy or foreboding, just its presence; solid, encompassing nothingness. I am back from holiday. My home is unfamiliar to me after two weeks, which is enough time to shed the habitual repetitions of living and moving in this space where I succumb to the daily habits of sleeping, waking, eating, washing, painting, and occasionally smoking. This sudden sense of discombobulation is unnerving. Home is the place where I am supposed to feel comfortable in my skin, breathe with ease, sleep soundly. But I do not feel at home.

My mind goes to the flat in Lyon where I have been cat-sitting for a friend. I recall her saying how much she appreciates me taking care of her cat. Really, it is Monsieur Mogg who has been taking care of me. Only when he is not present in my environment do I notice the invisible threads of relationship. The unfathomable sense of a companion creature who speaks a language not of words, but of the eyes, a sharpening of the ears, a cocking of the head, the pulse of breath undulating from his belly and through his fur like sand dunes in the Sahara. In the heat of the summer, he lies on the floor, his legs extended front and back to have as much of his body area as possible touching the lowest, and therefore coolest, part of the flat. We exist, the two of us, like Yin and Yang, walking around each other and passing through rooms as though dancing a slow, heart-pounding tango. We do not touch (Monsieur does not like to be constantly stroked) and in this unspoken understanding, we give each other the freedom to be.

Back home in London, I lie in bed and find it unusually difficult to fall asleep. I long for someone to be lying next to me holding my hand. Simply this. For someone to say, it’s going to be okay, I’m here with you and we’ll get through this together. The physical aching is just an expression of my body’s need for emotional comfort. We call it love, sometimes. It is compassion, empathy, acceptance, a witness to who I am. The greatest privilege of being in relationship is getting out of my head and focusing on the needs of someone or something else on a daily basis. To love another with kindness. How wonderful to wake up and go to sleep with the sense of my heart’s connection to another living being. To be utterly vulnerable and not feel so alone in my little corner of the world. This is what Monsieur and I ddid for two weeks. Take care of each other and be witness to each other’s life.

It occurs to me that so many of my relationships with people have been fraught with tension. One-upmanship, competition, measures of worthiness, flirtation, manipulation, sexual prowess, standards of beauty, expectations, and so on. The list is endless because the reasons and justifications for “power over” in any relationship are endless.

On holiday in Lyon, I spent some wonderful days with my ex-husband, Denis. My friends regularly ask whether we will get back together again, but this is an erroneous question. On this visit, I realise the real power of relationship lies in the willingness to clear away memories of the past, both good and bad. I used to be terrified of forgetting the incredible years we had together. In hindsight, I see that the mind mostly holds onto the bad experiences (our defensive animal nature), solidifying the reasons for why I was right and he was wrong during the time of our separation. The seismic leap to “forgive and forget” means we can both love each other for who we are in the present, creating a new relationship which often feels more profound than the previous one.

Every relationship has a beginning and an end. Nothing that lives and breathes lasts forever. So I hone in on the present. The Now. And in the now, my objective reality is that I live on my own. However, I am not alone. I sit in the garden and watch the plants gently swaying. I listen to the wind rustle through the trees as I quietly smoke a cigarette (the paradox that I may be killing myself is not lost on me). I feel Nature breathing as I am breathing. I have no idea what will unfold tomorrow, no matter how many narratives my imagination lets loose in my mind. I feel the longing, the sting of water in my eyes, the tears as they roll down my cheeks. And to feel these vibrations and rhythms of life, as vast as the sky and oceans that take a unique form, moment to moment, day to day, season to season, is something to be grateful for. Because even though I may wish to dance with joy and happiness and love and fulfilment all of the time, what a relief it is to also know that sadness, fear, grief and anger are not constant. Every feeling and emotion expressed will pass in time, and remembering this, I see all emotions are equal.

And what kind of relationship will I choose? I have made my mind up not to resist the ebb and flow. To accept with grace my body, feelings, emotions, thoughts, dreams, stories, longings, and all experiences. One day, all of it will pass.

15 March 2020. It is the first day of an emergency two-week lockdown in Spain (which would be extended to a total of 8 weeks). We are to stay in our homes and only go out for food supplies or medicines. It is an unprecedented and highly conflictual imposition on people's civil liberties, but the only way to counteract the infectious disease claiming lives by the thousands on a daily basis. Though it feels shameful to admit, my immediate reaction is a huge sigh of relief. Not because I am doing my part to protect myself and my community, but because I suddenly feel released from the burden of having to meet people, make friends, learn a new language, increase my knowledge of local culture and history, and all the other demands of moving to a foreign country.

While many people were horrified at the prospect of isolation or being on their own for such a length of time (which in hindsight had both positive and negative consequences), the pandemic gave me the gift of solitude. It was my chance to reclaim a sacred space, where there was no one to judge me, control me, or pressure me, neither externally nor by self-imposition.

I made it my mission to dance for an hour every morning, eat healthily and write. I wrote every day, including the weekends, because time had lost its rhythm. No one was going out to work and no one was relying on me for anything. I was a lone spirit swimming in the midst of a global catastrophe, somehow oddly at peace with the reality of my mortality. I worked with discipline and even felt reluctant to have video calls with friends and family whom I perceived as invading my solitude. It was a precious and creative cocoon, which had been a dream for many years, though I'd not imagined it in such dire circumstances.

I used to believe that solitude was a self-indulgent luxury; wasted time and energy in the art of navel-gazing, which does very little for the greater good of societal productivity. Since childhood, I believed my wanting to be by myself was wrong. I had to trick my grandparents and aunts (with whom I lived) into thinking that solitude was really for the purpose of doing my homework or studying for a test at school. I had to pretend that having time for myself was not my preference, but a drudgery for my education, a reason that resonated with the goal to somehow better myself. To have solitude just for being who I was was not the purpose for which I was born, because my waking hours were meant for collective female rituals such as cooking, cleaning, washing, making crafty things for the house and beautifying myself. That I should want to read books, or write, or dance, by myself, for my own enjoyment. God forbid! Such intellectual pursuits were not meant for girls who would grow up to be good and decent Hindu women.

Yet when I got divorced some years ago, solitude became a necessity, a sanctuary of time to grieve. I remember a similar feeling when I came to London at six years old to live with my family in a council flat in Finchley. My three sisters and I shared a bedroom, sleeping top-to-toe, two of us in each bunk bed. An entire bedroom for one child was unheard of in the context and time my parents lived in. There was a damp spare bedroom where none of us could sleep and nothing was ever done to get it fixed. My mother used it as a prayer room, for there always had to be an altar for the gods and the dead, who did not live on this earthly plane. In that crowded flat, I felt suffocated living with a family I barely knew, and hated returning from school to a home where my sisters bullied and fought and swore relentlessly. To be with them meant facing the constant threat of anger and violence, which multiplied threefold when my mother got home from work.

So what does a child do in this situation? I retreated into my mind — into books and stories and studying. I think I made an unconscious decision to prefer everything that was different from my sisters so I didn't have to belong to the family collective; solitude gave me strength and made me resilient.

After my marriage ended, however, solitude was a conscious choice. It was the most difficult experience of my life, when the woman I'd believed myself to have evolved into over a lifetime, fell apart in a way I could never have predicted. The only thing I knew to do was to submit wholeheartedly to my creativity. Through dancing and writing, I reclaimed a sense of who I am that no other person is able to see or fully comprehend, the deep part of me that is the seat of confidence, courage, self-belief and enduring patience, which cannot be shaken by external events or people.

During lockdown in Spain, solitude was a period of time to live with questions and doubts about the past and future. It was an experience I imagine like the myth of the fire phoenix, when old identity dies and burns, and the phoenix is then reborn with a clean slate of innocence to create a new life. Even now that I am back in London, as the pre-pandemic ‘crazy, busy’ returns with a vengeance, I am determined to hold this solitude at the centre of my core. To make time and space to be still, on my terms alone. In lockdown, I completed my novel, and despite much encouragement from friends and family, I have decided not to publish it. Because to say NO in a society that is obsessed with global self-promotion of all that was once sacred is my choice and my responsibility.

It is February in London. The bone-chilling force of the wind seeps stealthily between the woollen layers of my coat, scarf and gloves, then jacket, jumper and vest. My muscles are braced tense against the cold, my arms and hands wrapped tight around my torso, as though I could squeeze myself to the point where my skin would become impermeable to the freezing temperature outside. Strangely, this is also how I sleep at night, arms wound around my chest. When my eyes are closed, the only world I can see is within, inside my mind and breath. With my arms I am trying to contain the vast and howling emptiness within, craving in the darkness for numb unconsciousness.

This concave curled-up-like-a-caterpillar position of the body is often associated with a sense of protection, when the spine curves to shield softer internal organs; seeking safety, comfort, or a rallying stance to shut out the external world. Like every human being, I began the adventure of life in this foetal position within my mother's womb, where my skin was vital for receiving nourishment from the environment. I imagine my mother nourished her own connection to me, the child growing within her body, by regularly touching and feeling the skin of her stomach.

Touch is the primary experience of love. When a father cradles his new born baby, when a mother gives milk from her breast, when a parent is willing to wash and clean their toddler and gently rock her to sleep, they are giving love. Sadly, by the time I became a child and was finally able to coordinate my limbs enough to reciprocate my parents' love, my father was no longer alive and my mother was exhausted with the grief of having lost him.

I don’t know exactly when the shift occurred. Perhaps it was a gradual acceptance of breathing into my lungs the stifling air of religion and the eternal shame of being born a girl, but we became a family who did not do hugging. My mother was a single parent with a full time job and raising four children. Skin to skin was a rushed affair; soaping and scrubbing in the bath, yanking knots and plaiting hair, or slapping in admonishment for misbehaving and fighting with my sisters.

Children do not necessarily understand their craving of love through touch, but they are highly adaptable. I thought I could win my mother's love with my smart brain. I studied hard and achieved top grades in my class throughout junior school and secondary school. Following my A Levels, I decided to study Architecture because it integrated my skill in maths and my love of art and design. I assumed my mother would be proud that I was the first of her daughters to go to university. Until I noticed part way through my studies that her expectations had changed. Sure, she didn't mind that I studied for a while in order to get a decent job, but when she found out it would take 7 years, she was exasperated. “When will you stop this studying lark and get married and settle down? Start living a real life?”

What a disappointment I was. My years of effort had not measured up. So I did the only thing I knew to do. I searched for love's touch elsewhere and ran into the arms of the first man who gave me a gold bracelet (for gold is the preeminent symbol of love for Indians). By then however, I hated my fat body and lumpy skin, and had no idea what it was to feel loved by touch. Losing my virginity (which must be the most horrid expression invented for first physical love) gave me no joy, because I did not love myself and had no confidence in my own worth. So I could not see what any man would find loveable about me.

Yet I carried on searching. And although I see it only in hindsight, I embarked on numerous, and ultimately disastrous, relationships because I was desperate to be touched. My skin constantly longed to feel that essential experience of love. I wanted to be loved by someone special, who I knew was waiting out there just for me. I believed in the delusion of ‘The One’, who would always keep me safe, take care of me, and with whom my body and skin would grow old.

The realisation was a long time coming. That education and culture is wrong. The dating sites, relationship books, women's magazines, parental advice, all misguided. Because we make the mistake of believing that love comes to us from ‘out there’ and that we have to be ‘good’ people to deserve it. We spend our entire lives in search of love from others, imagining that we need to behave in a certain way or agree to certain conditions in order to receive love's touch. But stop for a moment and look. Our skin, the largest living, breathing sense organ of our body, is permeable both ways. It can absorb touch from the inside out, as well as from the outside in. We are already, and have always been, touched by love, which is within us and in our ability to create and feel in abundance, for ourselves and for everyone else.

And because we are biological, organic, living beings, one day we will die. There are no ifs or buts about this truth. While we are here, however, the relationship we have with our Self is ever-present. And just as our skin and body is continually transforming, so is the potential to love who we are unconditionally.

The next time you feel like curling up like a caterpillar in isolation, go beyond the defence mechanisms. It is a simple change in direction to go within and be vulnerable to accepting and loving yourself in the moment. No matter how vast the chasm of emptiness feels, love is not about filling it with heart-shaped cushions, jewellery, chocolates, or expectations. Give the love within your skin space to unfurl its wings and fly.