Poorna Bell - In Search of Silence

For Mum and Dad, because you are the first two people I ever loved.

For my sister, Priya, because you are the third. Because this is a song of everything I am, and who I became, and it began with you.

It seems to me that, if we love, we grieve. Thats the deal. Thats the pact. Grief and love are forever intertwined. Grief is the terrible reminder of the depths of our love and, like love, grief is non-negotiable. There is a vastness to grief that overwhelms our minuscule selves.

We are tiny, trembling clusters of atoms subsumed within griefs awesome presence. It occupies the core of our being and extends through our fingers to the limits of the universe.

Within that whirling gyre, all manner of madnesses exist; ghosts and spirits and dream visitations, and everything else that we, in our anguish, will into existence. These are precious gifts that are as valid and as real as we need them to be. They are the spirit guides that lead us out of the darkness.

Nick Cave

Auntie Poo, my four-year-old niece, Leela, says plaintively.

Mmm? I reply, looking up from my book. We are in my sisters warm living room, cuddled up on the sofa in a mound of cushions and blankets. A phrenology bust regards us sternly.

What is married? Except she isnt old enough to curl the rs, so it sounds like mawwied. She looks at me. Her eyes are huge like mine, and they have been like that since she was a baby.

Where my eyes are green with an iris of flame, hers are the inkiest black. Though she is barely over a thousand days old, she is looking at me with those dark, solemn eyes like an ancient creature, as old as meteors passing through space.

I swivel a desperate eyeball at the stairs, but my sister and brother-in-law are lost in a black cosmos of exhaustion: the sleep of grateful parents.

Here goes nothing...

Well, you know Mama and Daddy? She nods. Her curly hair flops over her eyes.

So, Mama and Daddy are a couple. Theyre married. They love each other.

Okay, she says. And what about Ajja and Dodda? Ajja and Dodda are the names for Grandpa and Grandma, aka Ashok and Jaya, my parents.

Ajja and Dodda are also married. They are also a couple and they love each other.

I see her brain whirring, and, finally, she nods. I realise she will never see me with her uncle Rob, who passed away three years ago. My sister Priya has taught Leela about him, and I have given her books about all the things he loved from the stars to the trees with his name inscribed in the cover, but she will never remember him holding her.

A fine dust of sadness settles onto my shoulders.

Then she asks: Will I get married?

I look at her unlined face. I breathe in the magic and potential of her. Imagine: a creature that has not been told what it should be yet.

I feel a pang; I never want her to know sadness or disappointment. I want her universe to stay safe and small. I want her to be this perfect, sweet little thing that hasnt been ground down by the world. But I know better, and I know that eventually these things come for us all, and all we can do is love the people in our lives well.

Sunlight lances through the room of our little kingdom and I bend down and place my hands on either side of her face. A pair of older green eyes look into the pair of beautiful black ones belonging to the smallest member of our family.

Through my hands, a silent wish of love, protection and kindness and a promise to protect her from anything that might hurt her. But, for now, a gift of words.

Leela, I say, you can get married, but you dont have to get married. You can fall in love, but you dont have to fall in love. You can live in a boat, a tent, a house. Wear socks as gloves and gloves as socks. You can be a princess, a ninja, a pirate, a painter you can be everything and anything. But, above all, be what you want to be.

She nods but doesnt say anything, because this is not the Auntie Poo she knows the one who is silly, who flings her about in wrestling matches, tickles her while in character as a giant squid and yanks her socks off to do sock puppet theatre.

I dont know if she understands any of what I am saying, but I know that every time the world comes along and lays its expectations at her door, when it whispers dark thoughts and says, I will tell you the kind of thing you are..., I will hold her hand and look the world in the face and say, No. Let us tell you the kind of thing YOU are.

It is spring in London, a late afternoon in April tugging at the threads of dusk. As the light softens to amber, a breeze slips through the streets to quieten fat buds of cherry blossom grown hot and flustered in the warmth.

The city has that pleasant hum of people migrating to parks for after-work picnics clutching bottles of prosecco, boxes of cocktail sausages. They line the pavements of pubs, sprawl across beer terraces like plants thirsty for sun.

It is a city that begins to flicker with mad hope, evident in the tiniest of ways from commuters wiggling toes into flip-flops to people packing away their winter coats.

My friend Aman and I have forsaken outdoor activities for a hipster Indian restaurant, and our contrariness is rewarded with seats on narrow wooden planks better suited to teenage buttocks. Like a pair of ancient rotisserie chickens, we rotate different pieces of our anatomy at regular intervals to ease the discomfort.

Small plates Indian food, I say, peering at the menu. When did this become a thing?

Apart from the benches that would not sustain even a third of the average Indian aunts butt, there are kitsch little lanterns and pretty printed tablecloths. Not forgetting the real reason our mothers would slipper us over the head for entering such an establishment: minuscule pots of curry at an eye-watering 20 each.

As we swizzle our coriander-and-mango vodka cocktails like the middle-class wankers we are, I start to tell Aman about an idea I have.

So Ive decided to quit my job, I tell him. Aman works in corporate law, loves the money, the members clubs, and this is tantamount to me telling him Im going to forsake my possessions, wear a sack and beat myself with twigs.

His eyes bug out and he stops mid-sip. A piece of coriander is peeping out at the corner of his mouth like a green hand waving hello.

And why , he says, would you want to do that? Your job is amazing, and you get to do lots of really cool shit.

Yes, I concede, my job is amazing, but thats not the point.

Then what is? he asks.

You know, I mumble, being happy. Having some time out.

Aman is happily married to a doctor and he and his wife have a two-year-old girl. Hes a cool guy, a loyal friend, but when it comes to family and career, he has the same mindset as a 1970s Indian pharmacist. He always goes for the most conservative, traditional option. When his daughter grows up, if she decides to do what Im doing, hed probably have an aneurysm.

Looking at his disdainful expression and hearing the words come out of my mouth, I start to waver. This seemed like such a great idea, with some extremely valid reasons behind it. But explaining it is like trying to separate the yolk from the white; one wrong move and it will come out in a mess.

Okay, he says, digging a fork into a teeny pot of quail biriyani. And what are you going to do with this time out?

I take a deep breath. Well, I wanted to travel. Spend some time away from London, you know, see the world a bit. Ive never done the travelling thing. And I could maybe write about it.