IMAAD MAJEED

Whenever my family head over to our ancestral hometown in Sammanthurai, I often stay back to take care of the house in Colombo. Well, it’s mostly because my mother worries about her garden. She worries about her children, too, and, actually, primarily me, so she often returns much sooner than she says she will be away. And so, over the years I’ve learnt which plants need how much water, how much shade, and such. Yet, it wasn’t until a recent rupture, relapse, and tumultuous phase in my life that I really gained a newfound appreciation for the flowers that bloom in this garden of hers.

Steeping in recovery, struggling to rest

Clitoria Ternatea, also known as butterfly pea, is quite a marvel to behold. Beyond its external beauty, however, I’m fascinated by how it’s been used for medicinal purposes. My mother found out somewhere that it’s good for cognition and particularly memory. She has been steeping them in hot water for my niece who is on the severe side of the spectrum of Autism.

In November, just before Cyclone Ditwah struck the island, I experienced an uncommonly drastic memory lapse. A whole day and night wiped from my memory. It unsettled me so much. I went through my bank records, my travel records, and my chat logs, trying to figure out what had taken place. I found a chat log in which I had been spiralling. My best friend told me to see my psychiatrist again, and he put me onto Lithium for the first time. Up until this point, I was only taking an antipsychotic. I have always been wary of Lithium, as a (now estranged) friend was on it and experienced severe tremors in his hands. As someone who needs their hands for their work, this made it a no-go zone for me.

The tricky part about Lithium is that it’s a slow process to get to your optimal dosage. At lower dosages, it only helps with depression, and you have to monitor a few factors through monthly blood-work to get to a dosage that can help with mania as well. It somehow made the recovery so much worse. I found myself becoming incredibly dysregulated and volatile. So I decided to go off the medications entirely, and tackle what was going to be the busiest period of my career just rawdogging reality.

It was, to no one’s surprise, extremely difficult. Yet, today, I am somewhat proud that I made it through without failing any of my contractual obligations. In the past, I have always taken a hiatus, isolated myself, disconnected from sociality, for as long as two months to even two years. This was the first time that I didn’t take that route. I dealt with life head on. And, by some miracle, I am still here, able to write to you today.

Finding a healthier morning ritual

My morning ritual in this time was to start with a few leaves of Tulasi also known as Holy Basil and Katpooravalli also known as Indian Borage, with a few peppercorns and some honey, as a salve for my throat that was in a bad way due to chronic smoking. Prior to this, for years, it was a few cigarettes and unsweetened black coffee. Then I’d steep the butterfly pea flowers to regain my memory. Frankly, I just really felt the need to remember my dreams. It took a long time for that ability to return.

Another flower that I found myself drawn to were the Hibiscus Rosa-Sinensis (Cankanirakkarantai, Pokuru Wada Mal). They are strikingly beautiful and so tender to the touch. I would use them for stimming in one hand while I tried to curb my cigarette intake. Then, later I tried steeping them too. It just so turns out that it helps soothe aggravation of vata and pita dosha. My dosha is vata-vata, so this worked out well for me. I would even sometimes mix the two steeped liquids together, the blue and the red, to make a purple tea. And these have helped me with my nerves, over the past few months.

One morning, I had left the discard of the steeped flowers on the kitchen paper towel, only to return and find the most beautiful hues that had seeped into the paper. More recently, I tried to more intentionally extract pigment from the flowers, and even tried to paint with it. Perhaps I will take this up and return to painting.

Strumming towards catharsis

My mother has always had a green thumb. She fared best at Botany in school, and had a short stint as a school teacher at Muslim Ladies College, before she had her first child, after which she focused on being a home maker, as we say. I have fond memories of her gardens over the years. The first home I grew up in had a guava tree. I remember the gigantic fruit it would bear. While many prefer the smaller pink guavas with the soft flesh, they’re not my preference. I remember an aunt teaching me the importance of slicing into the fruit first. As she cut it open, it revealed a worm working its way through it.

We don’t always see the rot inside ourselves, or the rot inside others. What feeds on us, while we go about our days. It’s only when we open ourselves up, to ourselves, to others, that we can really witness, though often just barely, what is going on in there. In some ways, this EP feels like that. It’s been a long time since I’ve written songs for the acoustic guitar. It used to be what I was known for, strumming wherever I was. I had long since abandoned my singer-songwriter career. So what changed?

I woke up one morning, a few weeks ago, with a heavy sadness that I knew meant I was overdue for a bawl. It’s not often that I cry. Sometimes I’ll feel my throat hurt, and it would seem that I’m about to, yet it doesn’t happen. Catharsis. It often evades me. Do you listen to music to escape? I don’t. I listen to immerse myself further into whatever it is that I am feeling. That morning, I knew that I needed an acoustic guitar to strum and explore the depths of what was going on inside of me. So I set out to try out the guitars that were available to me in this little town we call a city.

When I was younger, I remember being captivated by John Butler and his approach to the 12 string guitar. It seemed daunting to me, hearing how skillfully he evoked so many emotions through his playing. I never imagined that one day I’d pick up a 12 string too. Yet, here we are. I named mine Mellon Collie for how she swells and shimmers around my infinite sadness. You can hear her in this EP that I just released into the world. Perhaps we don’t all cry through our eyes, or with the same physicality. Perhaps many of my poems are written with the ink of tears. Here are just a few.

Love is violence, a lover once said

The first time I ever witnessed a guitar being smashed onto the ground was not at a rock concert or a YouTube video. My mother bought me my first guitar, when I told her that the keys were not my instrument and I wanted to try the strings instead. She got me one from a store called New Tone in Wellawatte. Made on the island, and it didn’t sound or feel great to play at all, yet it was my own and I cherished it. At school, my friends asked what the make was and how much it cost. One of them laughed and said it would come apart when I strummed it. Being the only child in our household sent to an international school left me quite alienated and I supposed I developed a similar status anxiety as my father.

We’ve had a piano in the house since the mid 90’s. My father would hear the piano from the neighbours, and he felt that was something essential to a household. My mother was sent to classes first, and she didn’t take it up, so then followed my siblings, and eventually me as well. The piano teacher was an elderly woman who would rap you on the knuckles if you hit a wrong note. I didn’t appreciate that, so I stopped going to the classes.

I learnt guitar mostly by teaching myself, with whatever tabs and chords I could find on the internet. It started with Sum 41’s Pieces, then Lifehouse’s You and Me, and even System of a Down’s Hypnotize. Once I had learnt the major and minor chords, and a suspended and diminished chord here and there, I started writing my own songs. Well before I ever wrote a poem, I wrote songs. My first poem might as well have been lyrics, yet there was no melody that came along with it.

My mother didn’t appreciate it that I spent more time with the guitar than with my textbooks. I wasn’t doing so well in school. So, one night, when I was watching TV instead of studying, she took my guitar out into the garage and smashed it onto the ground. Yes, very rock and roll, yet also quite traumatising for a teenager. Over the years, I’ve quietly forgiven her for it. We have always had a rocky relationship. Yet, I may never know a love as vast as that of my mother towards me.

During my dysregulation, I couldn’t sleep for 3 days and 3 nights, until a package arrived in the mail from Aotearoa. It contained a poetry journal I had just been featured in. I opened each copy to whatever page it would fall onto, and read stanzas from it. One poem by Shivangi Mariam Raj, whose words I only knew through her critical essays, had a line about God needing us to close His eyes, and that finally put me to sleep.

When I awoke, my mother had asked the neighbour who makes lunch parcels to provide us lunch, and my mother offered to feed me. It had all the curries I cook myself: pumpkin, beetroot, paruppu.

Moments of serendipity such as these remind me that perhaps we don’t always recognise the angels around us. All we can do is turn our head to one shoulder, whisper as-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakaatuhu, then turn to the other shoulder, and whisper the same.