In sickness and health, I do

Illustration/Uday Mohite

Happy birthday to this column, which is fifteen years old this week.

I remember the anniversary of this column not (only) because I love to mark birthdays and anniversaries with fanfare. This column was born around the same time as my niece who I call Kishmish. I remember sending the first one into the world while walking that new-born squiggle of a person on my shoulder in hospital.

Writing a column is also like being a maasi. You are inside and outside; free of daily attendance, yet responsible and involved.

Perhaps it suits my nature. One of my friends likes to describe me as a ban ki chidiya--the bird of the forest who loves to play catch me if you can, but is miserable if caught. This has a pejorative air of being a tease and avoider. I'm khadoos, but dependable, so it doesn't resonate, but still I'd wonder about it. The leela of life is a game of mirrors. You glimpse yourself in another's eyes and then it's gone, so you search again.

When my niece was a toddler, she loved a game where she would hide under a quilt and cry out "where is Kishmish?". It was our cue to go hither and thither with mystified exclamations of "where is Kishmish?". Then, shiny eyed she would throw off the quilt: I am right here! We would collapse with delight, and resume till we were sated with fun. One day, for variety, I pulled off the covers exclaiming, "here she is!". She looked betrayed. "No! You were supposed to seek me, not find me". Of course. It's Hide and Seek, not Catch. It's a different form of commitment to playing.

In youth I hung with a self- described set of bohemians. Which for them meant being free of all things marked as bourgeois (us time ka red flag) - bathing, shaving, courtesy. Yaniki, a bramble of bearded gents saying "you should not have expectations" was considered edgy and political. You owed no one anything. Anyone arguing against this was square. In its contemporary version, difficult things are indiscriminately categorized as toxic. Difficult friendships, a search for love, striving and sweating to create beautiful work - call on us to swipe to next.

Commitment is sold to us as some kind of destination at the end of freedom. Earlier it was monogamy. Now polyamory has joined the army. But we know feckless monogamists and unkind polyamorists. Birds are committed to the forest, not only the tree; committed too to the circling, itinerant pattern of returning to a note, even as you fly far and wide in a raga. It's a practice, not a format.

This column has been a constant of my life's second half. I have written it through fevers and festivals, post-production and parties, concerts and conferences. At every hour in places near and far - Nalla Sopara, Rangoon, Prague, Madurai, Andheri, London, Paris, New York, LA, San Francisco, dil mein mere hai dard-e-deadline. I have written it while people scolded me, why don't you write a book (like marriage, that's the real thing). I might. But this is love too, this muscular effort in the bandish of word count, while flying free across topics from lauki to injustice.

In 750 rounds of hide and seek with readers, I learned something about myself: yaniki, I am one committed bird. Thank you for listening to my songs frenz.

Paromita Vohra is an award-winning Mumbai-based filmmaker, writer and curator working with fiction and non-fiction. Reach her at paromita.vohra@mid-day.com