The Resolute Word-Stain

          When you think of ‘dheeth’, what comes to mind?

For me a ‘dheeth’ has always [until now] meant someone who wouldn't budge. One who didn't see another’s point of view and wouldn't budge from his or her stance. Nothing seemed to mattered to them, neither insult nor barb. They remained resolute in a way that went much beyond mere stubbornness. It wasn't a compliment if you called someone a ‘dheeth’ It meant that they were being stubborn in a way that was annoying to those around and was considered to be somewhat in bad form.

When I chose to make a cup of stains using the word-stain ‘dheeth’, I did it initially, because I really liked the form that emerged when I was drawing out the word to make the blob or word-stain. Going over the letters of the Devnagiri script, with a black felt tip pen, going round and round the word, I created a blob that looked like a more than usually rotund Rudra Veena, [used in Hindustani Classical music] where both the resonators [made from hollowed gourds] were too close to each other to create a harmonic resonance and perhaps, no music at all. Ironically, isn’t that what shame does to us – anything that stains and shrinks our sense of self tends to diminish the grace of being – that music of the spheres that resonates within. 

I used a piece of fabric, that hadn't been stained using tea, but was cut out of a large image of tea-marks in a cup, digitally printed on fabric, layered and stitched with Kantha. I wasn't thinking ‘dheeth’ when I was doing this. I was allowing the form the word-stain that I had made - the blob as it were, to lead the way. 

The cup became part of the installation - THE STAIN TEA PARTY, which was part of my recent exhibition in Delhi and will be shown again at my solo show - 'The Piercing Needle' in Kolkata, in January 2016.

 I'm curious to know what you think about this cup of embodying the word ‘dheeth’ – a word-stain. 


For me, it didn’t appear to represent the meaning I'd grown up with and in some sense seemed to have a quality of celebration around it, which intrigued and made me question my preconceived ideas. When someone is called stubborn, or persistent it is assumed that they are not looking at another’s point of view. In a sense, they are not accommodating the other, but sticking with the way they feel about a situation. And, because of that they are judged in a diminishing way, because stubbornness has evolved to have a negative meaning.

This exercise made me re-think things. I thought about how as a child, I was often called a ‘dheet’. Sometimes, in these situations, I would try and speak but the feelings were very intense and hard to share what I felt and or why I persisted with doing something that others felt was unworthy and derided me for. As the cup of word-stain ‘dheeth’ evolved, I realised that  not only did it  question the negative connotation that I had carried in me, about being called a ‘dheeth’, but made me find a depth of meaning about something that I hadn’t consciously acknowledged before, but the stigma carried in some part of my being emerged intuitively, enabled through this creative venture.

The colour of the fabric that I chose [intuitively] was dark with virtually no light being reflected off that greyed fabric, despite it having a rather tactile quality. But the way that the rotund, sort of plump form seemed to grow from its ‘lumpishness’, to rise up from the base, to skirt the inside of the cup – it lightened the mood, lightened the sluggishness of mind, that I suppose, one does associate with a ‘dheeth’. The assumption being that if you cannot explain the feeling then you are mentally lazy.

And then the beads – round like the ‘lumpenness’ of the blob [word-stain], but coloured a little more vibrantly - not so dark, but of the same family of hues that generally surround the colour of tea. The beads added a sense of delicacy. They added a jewel-like quality to the whole cup of marks created from a word with generally negative connotations. A word that denounces someone for being resolute in a way beyond mere egotistical stubbornness, of coming from a space of knowing or feeling that couldn’t be explained.

In exploring the ‘lumpenness’ of this form, in examining it and allowing it to speak and unfold through this creative process, I seem to have arrived at some understanding. If not understanding then at least the possibility that could exist for understanding, that, behind this resolute stubbornness which was ‘lumpen’ in some sense, there was a kind of knowing which when unravelled, lends itself to embodying a level of elegance or grace.


I feel things intensely; sometimes it is impossible to put those feelings into words. Sometimes this feeling is a knowing that is beyond words. It is not always easy to live with but not only could it take hours to unravel, it sometimes takes years to understand why I was so resolute about something. I have annoyed people, have even felt isolated, but sometimes one persists because you feel something from the inexplicable space of knowing that even if challenged will keep you going in the same direction. To others it may seem annoying, foolish and even detrimental to a perceived/ preconceived state of well being. Some even call it being self-destructive.

Looking at what emerged through the cup of stains, I wonder, that despite all these barbs, if it could actually be a high level of sensitivity which accesses a state of being where the nuances of feeling are deep and subtle, but resolute. And it is this which keeps such people rooted, to remain in that space of inexplicable knowing with conviction, which has been misunderstood?

Intensity of feelings can be uncomfortable to live with and I have worked hard to understand my own, using words that never seem to end – it is almost as if explaining feelings is the most difficult thing to do and one should just have the faith to stay with the feelings – so what if you are called a ‘dheeth’? 

Life will unravel through the unfolding of experience as it is lived, and trying to figure it out, to explain to the world around you, while not a totally futile exercise, could be end up being one where you realise that there really is no point in explaining? At least not all the time?

Being a ‘dheeth’ in our world which has given it negative meaning, then, seems to be an exercise in faith. To live without the conscious knowing and clarity of thought to justify the feeling, but keeping the faith by being true to this feeling, however unfathomable and questionable it may be?

And here one is not referring to those without qualm or decency who are are at the opposite end of the spectrum, where the stubbornness comes from ego, arrogance and even from fear of allowing their sensibility to be challenged. I guess there is always a fine line that distinguishes the ‘dheeth’ who is egotistical and one who works from a deep level of connectedness to their soul.  

 

The Stain Tea-Party invited people, visiting the exhibition, to make a cup of stains. It was an exercise that came up with many surprises because not only did I find a lot of people willing to explore the ‘marks’ in their mind, the quality of the material, which included beads and sequins, allowed the participants to enjoy the process and not think stains or marks. It liberated them, to some degree, from any associations they may have held with the idea of marks that create a sense of shame. Many revealed how they found a sense of relief in doing this exercise. And when their chosen word transformed through this process, which was purely visual and tactile, light-heartedness in being was experienced. Some even shared how this creative exercise had also deepened their understanding of ideas pertaining to shame they may have felt for issues about themselves that had gone unacknowledged.

My creative work has always been about unravelling the self. It has been about me talking to me, relieving pent-up feelings and ideas that dwarf, to rise above. But to share this process with others through the Stain Tea-Party Interactive Installation and have them experience something similar was gratifying indeed.

The Universal Language of Stitching Art - A tool in an experimental field at the crossroads of art, philosophy and care

In the course of a conversation with Gopika Nath about philosophy of stitching, I came to examine some words around philosophy of stitching.

English requires three words, “ folds”, “ pleats “ and “ creases “ to describe three different “ states of the matter”, where French use only one “pli”, to describe the same situations. Well, not exactly, “crease “is “faux pli”, and other subtle reasons of sentence construction that would be fastidious to mention here.

This question has been haunting for long in my textile art practice.  Not only regarding words, but real cloth. Words “unfold” into a mental space, where textile art practice evolves in the real 3D world.  And I’m not naively re-discovering here an elusive “neat simplicity of things as they are”, opposed to the space of “evil concepts”.

The world of stitching and fibre arts is of cultural representations, where teaching and learning, human transmissions, education, knowledge, come along with models and documentation. Yet how is it that stitching, for being culturally complex, speaks with equal universality to human hearts?

The holistic approach of fibre arts

We may have an answer. It’s because stitching, with other textile art techniques uses the body as a tool for mediating a self-analysis operated by the mind.

The repetitive way some tasks are performed creates a soft trance that connect to yourself, creating this “temporal bubble“where fibre artists, as most crafters, find themselves in.  The body is not used as in a sports activity but, by involving the eye, the hand, and sometimes the legs, in small scale coordination, together with brain in a highly complex mix.

It re-enacts the links you used to solicit when you were, as a child, constructing your representation of the world, and the ways to interact with it. Understanding a weaving pattern is a demanding task, partly done by the body. And this task of constructing an inner representation of the world is the same as building yourself up and together;

The ability to transport you into a world where you can walk again in the path of this building process makes stitching a precious tool for healing, using the mind in spiritual ways, to make, not intellectual virtual constructions, but concrete inner connections that are building or rebuilding yourself.

It also explains why it’s “above” tongues: because it’s functioning upon mechanisms that are put in place while learning of language during childhood.   

First mechanisms of language acquisition start very early and involve other “proto-representational” schemes that could be qualified as “artistic”, a convenient, but relevant way to describe how we feel when art speaks this language of harmony we all know, without using words.

This primary language is universal. It helps us to walk along the path between us and other people, and helps to find harmony inside our self and with others. 

 

A paradise you could reach with your hand
Of course, as with all practices that deal with human, things are not that easy. It’s not because you find a problem that this problem is solved. Seeing a problem is only a condition sine qua non to see a solution. And even once you think of a solution, a lot of work remains to be made, because of circumstances that slow the healing process.

It might takes years or be frustrating. Looking back over yesterday, you are happy discovering its better today, but no warranty to be any better tomorrow etc.

Stitching is not a magical recipe for happiness, you could use by itself, excluding other activities and other people. At the opposite, textile art connects you to other people, helps you find these you resonate better with, or to practice other activities. It might help realize how cooking, dyeing, dancing with others can be wonderful.

It takes a bunch of people to breed sheep, grow linen, dye, spin, weave, sew, stitch, patch. Textile art is wonderful at making you feel how important you are in a group of humans motivated to create beautiful things.

Could this energy, a useful resource for a life enlightened by jubilation, be used more and better than it is now?

We know we don’t have answers to every question. We are not in the making of a technical manual, but in human relationship. Each person is unique, a case at this moment, and other technicians of education, care, psychology, and very widely of philosophical, spiritual and mental life are welcome to examine the case.

Once these precautions taken, we may work out how the practice of textile art participates in the development of concrete experiences aimed at a better understanding for new contributions in education, relations with others of the human being, in the physical, intellectual, spiritual and social aspects.

 

Stitching, a rooted knowledge
We know see how the idea comes to mind that an artist could make other people benefit from this practice artists accompany other people on the path, turning into a practitioner who would help  the positive effects to happen during the walk, by walking along and teaching the technique.

We all know this is already widely working with a true success in every town every day around the world, but the links between teaching, care, technique, and self-awareness are not always clearly defined. In fact, all nuances of the pallet can be found through various kinds of “workshops” in general. 

As long as it works, everything is fine, and we would like to do some research in the field, avoid  transforming a charming wild garden into a boring park, but see if we could set up a small glass-house somewhere.

In the experimental field, the experimental tool requires experimental operators. Now if you look, an artist repeatedly travels not only between herself and the world, but also between innovation and mastered techniques, her crafting know-how.

A release (of problems, question) has to be operated from a base. And this base is made of traditional know-how that artists inherited, built and developed over centuries into a “personal style”. All this in one word: “culture”. While Gopika has been “described as a contemporary artist using traditional embroidery as a medium”, we see her, at the same time, searching for the roots and story of embroidery.

While there is nothing more contemporary than “care “, even in art, there is nothing more necessary to contemporary art than technical tradition.

It’s a move we share at our workshop, L’Atelier de Minuit. While Lydie deepens her knowledge of traditional embroidery, using cloth with a past, dyed with vegetal colours, and stitching following historical models, Guillaume explores the bridges between this practice and contemporary trends of art.

 

Art, care, culture, civilization

Folding and unfolding, to pleat or to crease, linking, joining, binding through a repository of terms that “ point to “ hand making, the art of stitching goes straight from the heart of matter to the soul, and connects us to ourselves and others like a universal language.

A saying: “Le travail des mains libère l’esprit”, could be translated into “the work of hands sets the mind free”, invites us to re-consider how traditional embroidery culture has become part of contemporary art.  The times we had to convince, that “despite using thread, yes, it’s art indeed“, are over. Shift happens.

Leaving the 20th century “star system” of art, a contemporary approach focuses on care, the one we take for each other, beginning with one self.

Rooted in centuries of tradition, stitching and other fibre arts are more vivid than ever, and able to enlighten how the brain, the mind, the heart and the soul collaborate into the one big thing that humanity is.

Practice of fibre arts is full of joy and peace. We would like to help young textile artists gain technique, know-how, as well as training and self confidence they need to extend this as a helpful tool, to fulfil mission of caring among and for others.

 

 

 Guillame Bur is a textile artist, which he says is mostly about spoiling silk and linen pieces. He is also a philosopher. Together with Lydie Arnould, he runs L’Atelier de Minuit, an organization dedicated to promote textile arts.             

      

                            www.atelierdeminuit.com

Knots, a Long Way

All who know, those who've attempted those tricky stunts, have all said we shouldn't keep the thread too long. But I was in a hurry. I had so much I needed to do. I thought the longer thread would sew faster.

I was wrong. It got into a twist as soon as I pulled the needle through the fabric. At the first tug through uneven terrain, a knot emerged. I wasn't ruffled. After all, knots are part of this whole threaded affair. But as I inserted the needle into the centre of the knot, carefully trying to prise it open, I realised it wasn't just one knot there. It seemed as if three of them were nestled together, really, really close. And, unravelling them was trickier than anything I'd tackled before. I could have cut my losses, started over and this time gone with the knowledge of seers, taking a shorter thread. But I'm stubborn. I like to finish whatever I've started and rarely cut the knots out of the thread.

 

I pulled and poked and tugged and cursed. I got some slip. It gave me confidence so I tried harder and persisted. The second one opened and I thought okay, it's going to be alright! But the last one was such a bummer. It wouldn't relent. And after the lengthy struggle, when it gave way and the threads separated and I could sew again, there was no thrill, no sigh of relief.

 
And then for a while, each time I pulled the lengthy thread through the layers of fabric, it knotted and I went through quite an ordeal.

All I could think of was that the time it took, it wasn't worth it. I was self-critical, judgemental and grouchy. But gradually the working eased up and after it was approximately half the original length sewing was a breeze. As I stitched in running stitch, tacking a finished embroidery onto organza, for it to be framed as if in mid-air, something stirred in me, akin to hope. No, not hope but something that seemed to revive hope.

I found the thread was nearly long enough to go right round the perimeter of the fabric - like a parikrama. Of walking around a sacred space and completing it from corner to corner, where this parkirama symbolizes the cycle of life - from non-being to being to self-realisation of that state of non-being. Although I didn’t manage this with devout faith, the idea was both heartening and interesting. This journey through life towards realising the fundamental essence of being as non-being is, after all, what the scriptures encourage us towards defining as the essential purpose of life, isn’t it?

But, it ended just two stitches short of it. This made me consider, that if I hadn't started from the uneven terrain, where the delicate organza was heavily layered with cross-stitched matte, which meant beginning a little before the actual corner, then it would have been a perfectly calculated length. But the reason I'd started out at that angle was because I wanted a strong support for the knot - that knot that secured the thread to the fabric.

 

This was a tricky dilemma. It had taken a long time. It had been a tiresome and knotty ordeal. I hadn't followed the prescribed wisdom of those that went before me. The beginning had taken up more thread and resulted in an incomplete parkirma. I could say that I had learned things along the way, unravelling the knots. I had tried something out that I'd seen through to the end – if not the end of the journey, but the end of the thread? And besides, what guarantees does one have that the shorter thread wouldn’t create its own knots? The length of thread was no longer the issue in my mind.

The crisis I faced, was at that crucial juncture when the thread ran out, which was the hardest to bear. It seemed such a cruel fate to have to re-thread, start all over again because even though I'd selected intuitively, even though my perception and foresight were profoundly correct, they still fell short of that perfect bulls eye - of getting it just right and validating all my choice in the process.

It seems simple doesn't it, to just pick up another length from the same reel of thread and carry on? But somehow, this isn't how we deal with the nitty-gritty of living, is it? If this were a situation that involved emotional issues, that sense of falling short would have been cause for recrimination and beating of the proverbial chest and questioning the existence of God. I mean, it would be perfectly natural to question that if I could come so close, why couldn't my intuition have guided me with the perfect length of thread? And so much would be said in a similar vein. But, a thread spun of cotton fibre, or that of the fibre of experience, at the end of the day are just that - a thread with which we keep sewing. Or isn't it?

I didn’t finish the parikrama, I left it two stitches short. It didn’t matter for the purpose of tacking the finished work, but would it matter in the larger scheme of living? I wonder. What do you think?

Probing The Shadows

Like the surface of the moon
marked with its shadows
the hollow of the empty cup 
gleamed through rings of debris
of a flavourful brew

Like the women of Bengal
I sewed stitch by stitch
collecting layers worn
                     Of years studied
under the shadow of this light,
Ruching, puckering, quilting
that canvas of emotions
that expression defies.

There is no meaning for some things
But without this anchor
the mind wanders in search
 
Wandering through the spirits
wandering through the world
Like a mendicant begs his alms
Experience begs meaning

It has to make some sense doesn't it?

Securing Your Boundaries....

I had been thinking of putting a fine line of Fevicol to bind the edges of the cross- stitch matte.  Despite telling myself each time I picked up the piece to embroider that I must do it at the end of the session, I'd invariably forget. I'd pack everything away carefully without protecting the edges from fraying. And the moment I picked it up the next day, I'd tell myself the exact same thing and forget, each time, in exactly the same way!

Once I had settled down to stitch, it was tedious to get up, put aside the many coloured skeins I had sorted out for the embroidery session – put the needle back into the fabric, go into the next room, hunt for the Fevicol tube and do the needful and then start the ritual of getting started all over again! Not to forget that the viscous solution of Fevicol would need time to dry. And this meant that the precious time I had set aside to sew that evening would be lost. No excuse really. More than laziness, it was the careless chalta hai attitude of “I’ll deal with it when it happens.”

The ritual of reminding myself, doing the embroidery and then putting it away, invariably without doing the needful, had gone on for days now. Predictably, as I was working on the same cross-stitch one evening, the threads at the edge of the matte started fraying. It was the insertion of the needle - a tad too close to the cut edge that was the culprit. But even so, I had known well enough that it would happen one day, but I had been careless nonetheless.

The threads were coming un-done.  This meant that the edge of the work, to which I was giving  finishing touches, would look rather ungainly. I was thinking this, chiding myself for not having put the Fevicol, and hating the idea of the wonky-edged cross-stitch. Almost in the same instant, as if by some ingrained reflex, I then used the very same needle to hold the fraying threads together.

Using the same cross-stitch technique that I was working to embroider the fabric with, using the same needle that had caused a fragile edge to fall apart, made me stop and think. It was a curious fact that I couldn't escape from:  the needle that pierces also repairs and even embellishes.... eventually. And equally curious was the idea that the technique by which I was embellishing the fabric was the same that I had used to repair the edge - doing my jogaad (make-shift repair). It wasn't just a repair of fraying fabric that I'd put into place. The stitch also allowed me to continue with the planned embroidery - as if the fraying hadn't even taken place. At least you couldn't tell unless you scrutinized the edge very closely. Only I knew of the damage.

Well, maybe an expert eye could detect it, but the kind of frayed work I was doing these days, it would pass muster.

I stopped doing the embroidery. I mean this sewing session was laden with meaning, I couldn't continue. I was distracted. I started thinking of the numerous instances when someone or some situation that had hurt me, had also been the catalyst for growth, change and more in the same vein.

It's not easy to deal with this rather paradoxical nature of life and I for one, can never really figure out how to deal with such things. Should I not be wary of the sharpness of the needle? Should one overlook its intrinsically violent nature, to only embrace the beauty that unfolds through its piercing of the fabric? No matter how beautiful the end-result, dealing with an instrument that tenaciously carries its thread in and out of the fabric, generating pain along the way, is a complex affair.

 The needle follows a charted course (sometimes not quite drawn on the fabric but guided by the unfolding design) - unwavering in its stance, oblivious to the silent trauma of the fabric.

If I consider myself the fabric, I know that I cannot forget the pain. And yet we do. That is, until the same sort of thing occurs again. And then it's almost as if a well has been uncorked, where the pain is felt all the more with each recurrence. It makes me wary of those people and circumstances that recur with them. Setting those boundaries can be a difficult thing.

I had known from experience that unless I protected the fragile edges, secured the boundary as it were, the threads would come apart. But I'd continued inserting the needle through those fragile threads for days together - forgetting to put the Fevicol that would bind and protect them. I hadn't taken the precautions - the fabric had to fall apart. It wasn't the fabric that was intrinsically fragile. In an unprotected state, I had carelessly subjected it to repeated piercing by that sharp, pointed needle - causing it to fray.

There was no-one to blame but myself. Again a loaded reminder that if one doesn't take cognisance of those fragile edges of ones being, doing what's needed to keep the equilibrium and set boundaries,  things will inevitably fall apart. Just like the threads of the matte did that night. And these repairs are not always as seamless as my embroidery work......

Photograph Album

I had started this project of working with stains by photographing the marks in my tea-cup and then getting them digitally printed onto fabric. Suddenly, about a month ago, it struck me that I wanted to work with photos and not have them printed on fabric. I wanted to use photographs from an album and embroider them. I went to the photo album of stains on my computer, edited some images – posterized them and played around on with the little photoshop stuff I had picked up over the years.

 

 There was a sense of urgency to the whole process. I was excited and wanted to see what would emerge, as much as the need to work through  a very stressful phase where I wasn’t getting the usual time to exercise, meditate and write in my journal – dealing with all that came up with the kind of careful scrutiny and analysis I have used to deal with the emotional build-up. I was quite stressed and didn’t have the patience to work with the hand so I used the sewing machine. Actually it was next to impossible to really get much done with hand sewing. Photo paper is thick and the stitches were large and gangly and didn’t really do much to alleviate or express the frazzled state.

 

I hadn’t really used the machine much since my last lesson; the experience of which I shared in a recent post. I didn’t have a clue as to how the machine would respond to photographic paper but some exploration and experimentation revealed that the machine is really quite amenable. If I had any problem it was with the paper, which tore easily. But that was resolved by using fabric beneath and above the paper. Yes, this did sort of create a veil and softened the stains, which made me want to add another element. And that was when I decided to burn the photos.

Armed with candles, some I burned with the fabric already stitched. And some were set alight before I put them under the scrutiny of the needle. As the photos of the stains, that I had recorded some time in 2009, burned, I realised that I was in some sense burning the stains – those marks that symbolized embarrassment, guilt and shame. I felt my frazzled nerves calm down almost as if I was off-loading emotional baggage - catharsis was taking place and without the usual ritual of conversations.

 

 

Burning photos, I found, was different to burning ordinary paper.  I didn’t want to really burn them to ashes so I kept a close watch over the photos as they burned and noticed a few things. They burned slowly. And instead of shrivelling up with a bundle of soft and feathery ash beneath them, like regular paper did, the ink smoulders, the paper melts and cracks. The ash is not soft and papery and in some sense purified by the fire, like paper being reduced to ashes – it has a kind of ugly quality.  It is not even ash, the photos crackle into a kind of putrid, thick and almost sticky, black substance. Photographs being burned created the oddest sensation which I encapsulated in a poem.

Flame
Yellow Orange
Ice-blue
within the burning red  

sets ablaze
photos

Ink smoulders
Paper melts
smokes
crackles into putrid ash

After the ritual of burning I sewed into the layers of photo-paper and fabric. It was a very intense process. Controlling the machine - to go round and round the marks, as I do by hand, is easier said than done. Especially with a novice like me trying to do it, but I had such fun. I wasn’t interested in making a piece of work that spoke of fine craftsmanship but wanted to explore the idea of erasing marks in the mind – memories that mark us. Going round and around the marks allows for tracing those marks – like going over the conversations or experience and putting them into perspective.

As I worked with the machine and then the hand - sewing in those odd details that only the hand can do, I realized that the stains or marks of experience that one may try and ‘burn’, are never really erased from memory. They can be buried in time, warped through its seconds and minutes, months and years, but what the mind may feel is forgotten becomes embedded in the body. The body doesn’t forget.
 

Those cells which supposedly renew themselves, they seem to retain the nature of our experiences in a way that our minds seem to have forgotten. I mean, think about it: if we have truly erased, forgiven and forgotten, then what accounts for the countless diseases that abound? 

As a healer I am all too familiar with the idea of stuff being buried under the carpet which shows up as dis-ease and therefore I think it is more about pushing things out of our minds, which often  may seem as if we have forgotten.  It’s worth pondering on why some people are healthier than others – especially those who are more cantankerous, miserable and vocal about their woes.

Memories
sewn as thought 
fade

These marks
buried in time

warped through weft   

the body
doesn't forget

Are You A Failure......Is Anyone......?

Failing doesn’t make someone a failure, quitting does
                                        – Bob Proctor

'FAILURE' is of those word-stains that I haven’t really wanted to deal with - for the simple reason that I am not sure what this word really means. Of course I know what the dictionary says, but as the above quote implies - simply failing to achieve doesn’t make us failures, only quitting, or terminating the process of trying to achieve does. Then, as long as we keep trying, we are still in the process of achieving and haven’t technically failed. But are there not limits to trying?  Are there also not limits set as to the kind of time one should technically take to achieve something? Aren’t these the parameters that have been dinned into our heads? And more often than not, when one doesn’t achieve something in a designate or reasonably good time, then we consider ourselves failures and give up. Until Lisa Nichols and others like her incite us to keep going with “Quitters don’t win, winners don’t quit”. 

So like I said I don’t really understand how to deal with this word and what it means because where I come from, it has often been said that one should know when to quit....so how does this work?

 

 

But let’s forget for a moment whether we concur on the meaning of ‘Failure’ or if the word should technically even exist in the larger perspective of things and consider instead that often, it’s the mistakes we make that becomes our failures – failure to know better, failure in being able to judge better or do better. Failure seems to dog us, no matter if we give up on something or not, right?

And how many mistakes we do make in a life-time. And then make some more? So, does anyone ever really feel like a winner, all the time? Do you? 

 

I don’t know anyone who really does. Even those who stand up and conduct self-help courses and seminars or webinars as they call them today, or write that pile of books I have on my shelves, have all fallen down and picked themselves up, just like you and I do, every single day.  But the more of these there are around, the more I feel like I am a failure. Sometimes, precisely because I cannot stand up and tell you how to succeed. I don’t have that fool-proof, designed to succeed sure-shot plan.

There have been many times that I have felt like a failure. There have also been those times that I have felt like more like a loser than a winner. Yes, on some days I do feel pretty chuffed with myself – especially when I win ten out of the ten games I am playing on scrabble. But, on most occasions I tend to feel less so, and wonder what have I achieved?

 

However, the other day, I had a small success. I wanted to learn how to use the sewing machine and the class went very well. I actually managed to write out the word FAILURE through the machine and then cut some fabric into little bits and play around with the multiple stitch options. The result was quite familiar. Yes, you read it right. I said familiar because it was almost exactly what I felt within me -a  total lack of order, no control over where I was going –  concentrating so hard on trying to co-ordinate the hand and foot and while it wasn’t quite the same as learning how to drive, it was a challenge.

I have resisted using the sewing machine because I feel good doing

hand-work which slows one down, in tune with the rhythm of the body. However, the past weeks had been rather stressful and the mental strain was just not allowing me to access that natural rhythm of the body easily enough - making me feel even more of a failure. I mean, where was all my training as a yoga practitioner, reiki healer and someone who has done intense meditation for twenty years? What was going on, where was I headed with this screaming inside my head?

One after the other some domestic issue was cropping up  -  tantrums from the help, one maid left, a new one started – totally raw and now I have the pressure of training her to boot.  The fridge was over-cooling and no parts were available – there was a special offer on so I bought a new one. That should have been easy, but the fridge turned out to be, not the one I’d ordered. But I couldn’t have got that one anyway because Samsung had misrepresented the product in their catalogue. I was over-charged and had arguing marathons that fried my brain and am have given up trying to get Samsung to explain the mess-up.  The list continues in this vein – an almost non-ending list that anyone who runs a home must be familiar with. 

 

Anyway, young Advesh from Usha Sewing Machines came to give me a demo and also instruct me, on how to use the sewing machine that I’ve  had with me, for a while now, but never used. I felt like an excited child with her new toy and before I knew it 3 hours had lapsed.  I was simply delighted to have just about learned to thread the needle and move the fabric - to get the needle to go along the lines that I wanted it to – very basic stuff. I was glowing with the praise from my tutor who said that he had never seen anyone manage quite so well, on their first attempt.  How wonderful that sounded to ears that had been on living on battle lines and only heard criticism from within and without, for days together!

I hope that soon I will gain greater control over the process because truthfully, by the time he left, I was nothing short of exhausted. It took every ounce of my concentration to press the pedal and trace the needle over the word ‘Failure’ written in running hand, on the fabric. 

 

Advesh is 24 years old and had come all the way from Faridabad. This is his first job and he’s been doing it for three years. It was very reassuring to have him around every time the thread caught in the needle because of a knot, or when I kept stitching and didn’t even realise the thread had snapped and was no longer in the needle, and a lot more of such glitches that came up. His practiced eye and hand guided me with patience and also watched me with utmost curiosity as I created a blob out of the word ‘Failure’.  I am sure he was cringing. It wasn’t the kind of embroidery he had ever seen, he said, but patiently guided me to do what I wanted.

The  reason that I chosen to learn how to work with the machine was because it occurred to me that in this age, where machines do so much of our work, could I really afford to continue to working with the hand alone? I needed to explore this dimension before I decided it didn’t work. And who knows, it may well turn out to be a useful support tool. 

 

I took great delight in allowing the machine to stitch. It was my first attempt and there was no expectation from myself – I just had to learn.  I was having fun and the machine suited the frazzled state of failure. I found a strange calm descending over me because for a while now, I had felt this intense desire to take some kind of a quantum leap to get past the plethora of thoughts that would run amok in my mind. I really was struggling to organize all aspects of my life – those fundamental things that needed doing from cooking and  more along with my professional work, and then burn them out of the mind by exercising - exhausting myself.

I did find some measure of peace at the end of the day when I was alone, to write or do some creative work. But, I would be so exhausted the next day that waking up was hard, I just didn’t want to. This strategy wasn’t working out well. I needed to figure out another way to express the angst and also find mental clarity and peace. It wasn’t good enough to dull the mind with exercise as it only got more intense the next day. What I needed was something that could adequately express the frazzle.  Working with the hand may eventually calm me down, but truth is that it wasn’t expressing the way I felt and expression of this fraught state of mind is what I sought – it was needed to get the ‘gunge’ out!

The whirring of the machine; the random stitching, making a piece that didn’t take hours but could be accomplished in a short while, made me feel as if I had accomplished something. At the end of three hours, my first three hours of sewing with a machine, I actually had something to show. 

 

It was different, it was a challenge and it also brought into play a whole different work ethic – all of which I managed. That day, I didn’t feel like a failure. I had learned to thread the sewing machine needle and make some marks with thread that expressed, somewhat, the way I felt. In the bigger picture if failure looms large, one needs to be reminded that it is the small things  we do achieve each day that add up to what can be called success.

I don’t think anyone can really be called a failure, even if we do give up. In the process of trying, it’s what we learnt that made us decide to give up, which is integral to the success of our story, is it not?