Poem about avocados & oblivion

and a nod to our hidden sister, Annapoorani

I began a series of public salons this month, with live podcasting and comedy. I was well loved, the event well attended, respected. I could barely handle the positivity. The one time I worked with a coach, she kept bringing up this concept of increasing my upper limit. You know, for joy. I ran right through the lines with this performance, smashed through the windows of my storefront glass. A dear friend surprised me at the performance from NYC, a continental journey. With him as an unexpected anchor in our home with my son, I was free to forage in the wilds of oblivion in the days after I sang with an audience. I found nothing there.

what is so sweet about oblivion
is it the existence you delay
the one that decays while you are away
is it the movement of the clock
is it a happiness
is there any happiness in here
i hear my voice echo in a
vast network of caves strung 
through with clear azul water
the cenotes ring 
any joy in here
a string of pearls wait silent
submerged, my question locates me
bounces back, in here, in joy

Zora Neale Hurston wrote, “I like myself when I am laughing.” It took me some time to view the footage from the event. When I did I saw myself laughing, and I liked it. I like to hear the people cascading, laughing. I like to hear them sighing, murmuring, thoughtful. This is something I do naturally, effect people.

my hair tangles
up before i know it
i am an ocean 
guarded by nests
pure, knotted halo
lift in a breeze 
of mortal tests

In the January weeks leading up to the event, a sister friend here in Los Angeles dropped off a brown paper bag of avocados at our ruby red door. Not just any avocados. Not like any avocados you’ve ever had. Unless you too have the good fortune to know a giving tree, ripe with clean, eternal avocados that redefine all you’ve ever known about much. Things grow best wild and nurtured. You can nurture the wild, without domination or demand. You can prune, water, tend by cleaning, clipping.

i want to tell you about
my comadres tree & the
avocados, how they are
when they are free
how they last & last
fresh forever
how sweet, clean
solid, green
i want to tell you 
how she left them at my door
in a soft brown paper bag
heavy with more
than i ever knew

As the new year turned, I soaked in a host of Indian sisterhood films, all with an edge of subversion: films with daughters, moms and grandmas; ones with badass ladies on bikes; ones with road trips; there were college reunions; and there was the one with a chef daughter being the only lighthouse of grace in a family led by a petty father. This one, Annapoorani, is a woman led story about food and freedom that was immediately censored to an inch of its life. Removed without a trace from the shelves at Netflix and Amazon Prime a few days after its release. As I was still chewing on the story, thinking about who I was going to recommend it to, the film was punished like a girl who doesn’t know her place in a home stuffed with patriarchy. Sent into hiding. Held back behind the curtains, disappeared. Shamed. You can still watch bootleg versions on Youtube, but wow, what a swift, sweeping silence over the land.

Annapoorani was played by a well loved actress in her 75th leading role. Legendary.

The films haters said it was an act of religious warfare, with beef at its center. My take is that some men did not like seeing themselves depicted so accurately on screen, in the role of Annapoorani’s bitter, seething, vindictive father. In this film, the daughter was far clearer and braver than her father. Her honor exceeded that of her priestly father, and all his cronies. A few men needed this film to die apologizing for itself, because they cannot forgive themselves.

what's the hardest part
that you're amazing
or that you're nothing
how do you oblivion
what violence
what running

With love,

Dr. Roopa Bala Singh