“Electric Zippers”, I say, touching his shoulder. He looks at me quizzically. “That’s what its made of – my bolero. Electric zippers.” He nods like he understands. “Kidding. About the electric part.”

I move to another part of the dancefloor. A definite move to signal my lack of interest in him.I have to be mindful and discerning of who I think is ready. Ready to move towards love. From lust. Not everybody is. Some people need to simmer in lust some more. Till they notice it start corroding their insides. Of their heart I mean. Disconnected from their sacral chakra. I hesitate to say “sacral chakra” for fear of being labeled woo-woo. Yet another fear installed by the collective to deter the masses from knowing the truth. Woo woo. Magic. All either silly, insane or taboo. Anyway, if you made it this far, I’ll just say it as is and then I’ll say it in a way that you’d understand.

Magic is real. Atleast as real as reality. As we know it. So, the real question becomes, what is it that we know? I don’t know about you but I have wrestled with this question for as long as I can remember. It started with me developing an internal sense, knowing and understanding of magic. All my senses, my faculties, my knowledge, my entire self knew what I had just discovered. But magic wasn’t real. It was not possible. It was just luck. Or a trick of the mind. And that was the paradox. And the beginning of my world as I knew it breaking down. 

This story is a more than a decade old. If I had to pick a starting point to this story, althoughI don’t really know the origin story. Yet atleast. Anyway, I wrote about it a few years after it happened because I felt an urge to document my experience. To whatever extent I could make sense of it.

<link to: K episode edited: actual link>

Okay, you’re back. Some things haven’t changed. I still put placeholders for parts of what I write that I can sense needs to be written but I can’t write – either because I don’t actually understand it or it feels too silly, insane or taboo to write about. 

What’s unwritten in that essay that I understand now is this: I experienced my self. It felt like the most beautiful truth and looked like love. No, not the Bollywood kinda love. It was infinite pure everything and nothing. Those in the psychedelic circles call it ego death, The ones in spiritual circles call it Self Realization. I knew nothing of these concepts – having never have tried psychedelics at that point or paid any attention to any of Hinduism, mythology or gurus, even though I grew up in India immersed deep in that culture. I intellectually knew nothing about it and my introduction to it was visceral and experiential. Which is how, I have since come to understand I learn and understand everything. I can’t seem to really understand words unless I have experienced the emotion the word represents. Before that, it’s just words. Like “capital gains” and “tax loss harvesting ”. Whatever. 

For simplicity, I’m going to call that experience as me coming to the realization that 1/ I was a person. 2/ we are all just people and we are all the same energy with varying magnitudes and complexity in different costumes. But essentially the same core enegry. 3/ we are all connected. 4/ the natural world – trees, plants, animals – can all talk to me in their own language like babies do – nonverbally 5/ karma and dharma are key organizing principles.

I dropped some heavy assertions there. So, if you are still reading even if out of skepticism, bear with me. I was skeptical too. For 2 years post-incident. 2 years where I questioned my sanity. And then questioned why I understood this so clearly when most around me were oblivious to it. And then wondered if it was like the movies and I was the main character and somehow woke up to my superpowers. Back to questioning my sanity and illusions of grandeur. At a point, I read the wikipedia of Ramana Maharshi, an Indian sage, I didn’t know of but chanced upon as I googled symptoms of a variety of mental illnesses. It had a blurb about how when he first “awakened” he thought the “devil had him and he went into isolation”. Unlike him, I didn’t think anything sinister was happening with me because I felt the most alive and happiest I had ever been but I felt like I had permission to explore the possibility that I could be like Ramana Maharshi. Eventually I came to the conclusion that this was just a natural phenomena of me waking up to my self. As hard it was to wrap my head around it, that was simply the truth I had arrived at that felt the most true.

What about the guy in question? I know, you are curious. It went nowhere. For years after he would ping me every now and then. To “keep track of me” as he’d say it. I eventually understood that he played the role of a mirror to me – I saw the reality of who he was and who I was. Tiktok girlies call it a trauma bond. Felt like it. Seems like I managed to transmute whatever karma there was into pure love – for him, myself and everybody around me. 

After 2 years of hermit mode, I was at a crossroads. As a young women in her late 20s, with a promising life ahead of her, would I choose to continue to live in the matrix or would I opt out. Opting out to me meant becoming a sanyasin in the Himalayas. I personally knew of a sanyasin from my undergrad days in India. I even checked in with her during my 2 years of elated, joyous, self-discovery and doubt and she said something which I think of as a totem to this day: “There is a fine line between mysticism and madness.” She and I had concluded that I was on the right side. But I was and have since been very cognizant of this fine line and the risks involved. I have also never forgotten the lesson of having anchors to ground me. Real world people who I deeply trusted. For me then, it was this sanyasin. Now, it’s my family. And going forward, I hope that it is you Dear Reader. By telling you as it is and was, I hope that you will point out any blind spots I may have. You may not know me like my family, but who really knows anybody? People know us to the extent we know and express ourselves. This note is my attempt to express myself. And stating the intention that this is how I would like to use this space and our time together. In return, I wish to offer what I know to be the truth. Love. The most beautiful truth there is and ever was.

For now, just imagine me wearing my favorite bolero. The one with Electric Zippers.