Writer.
As Sweet As Honey:A Novel (NY: Alfred A. Knopf), February, 2013
Inheritance: A Novel (NY: Knopf), 1998
The Journey: A Novel (NY:Knopf), 1990
All available from Vintage & Beacon Press
A friend once claimed he read the end of books just in case something might happen to prevent him from reading to the end. He was joking, but I bet serious, too. What if I die not knowing is our fear, is it not?
Despite peeking, I watched the remaining episodes of The King’s Affection, and found the show magnificent and satisfying. It offered twists, and surprises. The ending could have been tragic, like Hamlet, with everyone dead, facing the logical conclusions of their respective actions. And in this drama, the actions were dire, violence dragged through political machination. Yet variations of endings were offered, with happiness a possibility at last, defined by love and companionship.
I think binge watching a serial drama lowers my capacity for patience. It makes me restless, wanting my questions answered ( who ends up with whom, mostly), unwilling to see the unfolding of story, the slow tease of reveal. For instance, I have started watching another Kdrama, one that is also full of dramatic curves, but one that also has me laughing out loud. And at episode ten, I peeked to episode thirty to see how it all shook out. I left room to be surprised though, though I am aware of where the show will end. I did this though I swore not to.
It has been ten years since my dear friend Rosie passed. I miss my companion, my best literary critic. Her husband and family remain heartbroken—her life cut too short. She would roll her eyes at my kdrama obsession. Are you mad, Indira, she would say, and I would laugh.
There was no way for me to peek at the ending of our story together, no way to predict what would happen when we first met all those years ago in San Diego, both newly employed at the university there. She was brilliant, a young professor who would go on to take her field by storm, a highly in-demand mentor and scholar. I had written one book at the time , and of the maybe hundred people who had read it to the end, she was one. We became fast friends, sisters really, and my family became hers.
I only stayed in San Diego for three years, leaving in 1995, but we remained friends for twenty more years , but that was all the time allotted to us.
All over the world now, friends are losing friends in the disaster of war, in the wake of illness and old age, or sheer accident. Nothing prepares you, and nothing explains the sense of powerlessness and loss in the face of death.
Indira, my friend Rosie would tell me now, go back and finish up your silly tv drama, and stop worrying. Better yet, darling, go write another book.
As I write this, a war is killing hundreds of children. Families are broken, people are missing, and nothing was what it was a few days back. I read the news, which is so new and disturbing I have not yet reached the point of numbness, the automatic protective measure of a thinking brain. Politics is on the stage, while the people get trampled.
I have lately been watching a historical Korean drama, The King’s Affection. If you want to watch it, be warned that this essay will contain spoilers. It is a drama of gender politics, in which a man fully declares his love for another man, suggesting that love simply is love, and is not reliant on heterosexual trope. It is also about the very different values placed on a woman’s worth in society, as well as the strict caste system that subjugates those who have no wealth or status. I binged through the first twelve episodes of this twenty-part serial, until I reached the very horrific plot twist in which a character who has finally been able to taste freedom for the first time, if not happiness, is forced to once again become indentured to the political manipulation of the kingdom.
I have already cried my way through these twelve episodes, as well as laughed, but I am wondering whether I will continue this drama. True to form,I googled the ending this very night. I will continue watch it, most likely, swayed by the beauty of the actors, and because on the whole, I like to complete things.
Why am I writing about this, other than it is my latest obsession? I think we escape life in many ways, seeking distraction from time, the way hours divide our days. My day is defined by when I drink coffee, snd when I have dinner. Both lets my body relax in the knowledge of the routine, the expected. Lunch is never so forgiving—usually a scramble in the day.
Watching these serials with subtitles lets me absorb the audio thrill of another language, and some food culture. I become enchanted as well.
What details of your life could you pay more attention to?
It seems to me that my life, although not at all what I expected it to be, is full of small moments of pleasure, little joys, that make my days worth a good night’s sleep and a sound cup of coffee in the morning. Maybe it is too little to settle for.
I am watching,very slowly, a K- Drama called Crash Landing On You that is so romantic, so heartbreaking, that at the end of each episode I am left astonished. I am watching it so slowly because at one point I could not bear its uncertainty, and watched the last episode to make sure it all ended well. And I began three others, some of which I have already concluded, while prolonging this very best of the best serial. It is a story of the kind I love best, a love crossing boundaries, that takes a very long time to resolve. I have loved love stories like this since I was seventeen, love stories that taxes its lovers cruelly by society, in which the lovers sometimes wait a lifetime to find their happiness. It is why I always rooted Odysseus to return to Penelope.
But my life is nothing like the sweet romances that I am lately watching with such delight. My life has no romance, but it does have comfort. Even as I watch a crucial scene from the drama, tears streaming, my cat comes over to investigate, make sure I am okay. I went to the beach for the first time today, in a very long time, to see the ocean,and video-called my mom, so she could see the ocean as well. I had dinner with a friend yesterday, glad to break bread in good company, seeing other people, saying hello, These moments in my life are precious, worth paying attention to. They remind me I am not adrift, alone in the world.
I sense I will live alone, though, for the rest of my life, but as I type this, my cat yowls in her own pain downstairs. She is getting old, and not always certain what she wants. I call to her, come puppy, because sometimes puppy just becomes a generic term of endearment. She had been ill for a while, and although she is doing well lately, I wonder if her ailment flares up enough mysteriously to make her cry. Or is it she suddenly realizes she is alone, while the other cat and I are upstairs, and cries out in confusion? Usually, it is only one cry she lets out before settling for the night.
So I think I will pay attention— ah, a second cry, and I’ve brought her upstairs, and now the two cats are hissing at one another. They are mother and daughter, used to having their own space, although on a rare moment, they will lie side by side peacefully.
How to not notice, how not to pay attention in this wild and wooly world of ours?
Indira Ganesan 