Episode Ninety-Seven: The Byte-Shebana Coelho
Shebana entertains the "other worlds" theory-the fact that other universes exist just millimeters from our own...and as for proof? Well, there was that thing she saw as a child. Listen in on this shorter episode as we talk the multi-verse, creativity and where magic comes from.
Transcript
Welcome to this week's episode of Bite-Sized Blessings.
This week,
The format of the podcast is a little different.
My guest is exceptional,
However.
Her name is Shabana Coelho,
And right now she's living in Spain.
I found this remarkable woman after doing some research on the internet and reached out to her and asked her to be a guest,
And very quickly she replied yes.
At the beginning of this episode,
I do feature one of her poems,
A poem called Mud,
And it was first published in Apogee Journal.
And then at the very end of this episode,
There's going to be another poem,
Another beautiful poem.
This is the one I actually discovered her through.
It's called Miranam,
And what caught me with the poem is that it's in Urdu,
Which is the language that I was surrounded by when I was a child growing up overseas.
And so I was instantly,
Instantly intrigued.
So I did a little more research.
She's a very accomplished creative and writer.
She's a filmmaker.
She has a book coming out so very soon.
But what caught my eye was her play.
She's also written a play,
And the title is The Good Manners of Colonized Subjects,
Which was recently part of the conference on exploring India identities through the colonial relationship in Cadiz,
Spain.
The event happened in September,
And it was quite a success.
At any rate,
This is a human being who can pretty much do it all.
Her story is fascinating.
Right after the poem Mud,
I will lead with my regular teaser for the episode,
So be patient.
This episode is absolutely worth the wait.
And so now,
My episode with Shabana,
And it's really an interesting one.
The rain comes like it belongs only to me.
My grandmother loves the sound of it on the metal paint cans that she has filled with mud from the garden.
Mud that I lifted in my own muthi,
My palm,
Like that song we sang in school from that old movie.
Nani,
Muni,
Bachhe,
Tere muthi mein kya hai?
Little children,
What do you hold in your palm?
And we say,
Muthi mein takdir hamaare,
Which I think has to do with our future.
But how can a future fit in my hand?
Even mud trickles through it,
Even that.
When I still,
When I lived in India,
And maybe I was,
I want to say,
Must have been before I went to boarding school,
So nine,
I would say.
And we lived in a bungalow at the bottom of a slope.
And the bungalow had a little garden,
And right next door was the garden or the courtyard of another building.
And I would play in that garden in front of the bungalow,
And I would play with other kids from the building.
So we would cross the wall,
You know,
It was a low wall,
And I would cross it and go over to the building and then cross back to my house.
One time,
In the high,
In like afternoon,
The height of the afternoon,
I,
Hanging in the middle of the air between the first floor balcony of the building and the ground,
I saw what I still,
Is like a big scissors,
Like shears,
You know,
Like gardening shears,
Just like suspended.
Like when someone asked me,
Did you ever,
Do you ever believe in other worldly,
Like have you ever seen something that,
I always think of that.
I always think of that.
I was thinking about it,
Because I,
When you sent the question,
And when I still,
When I lived in India,
And maybe I was,
I want to say,
Must have been before I went to boarding school,
So nine,
I would say.
And we lived in a bungalow at the bottom of a slope.
And the bungalow had a little garden,
And right next door was the garden or the courtyard of another building.
And in Bombay,
I remember like high noon or like that,
Not high noon,
But like maybe two,
Three,
When it's really,
Really hot.
It's a time when no one is out,
Like they suddenly say only mad dogs and Englishmen or something like this.
There's a phrase we say,
Are out.
And I have memories of being out at that time and seeing like women with umbrellas walking and like people being like,
What are you doing out at this time?
You know?
And I would play in that garden in front of the bungalow,
And I would play with other kids from the building.
So we would cross the wall,
You know,
It was a low wall,
And I would cross it and go over to the building and then cross back to my house.
One time in the high,
In like afternoon,
The height of the afternoon,
I,
Hanging in the middle of the air between the first floor balcony of the building and the ground,
I saw what I still,
I,
It's like a big scissors,
Like shears,
You know,
Like gardening shears,
Just like suspended in the air.
And I literally,
To this day,
I don't know,
Was it a dream?
Did I really see?
But it is like when someone asked me,
Did you ever,
Do you ever believe in other worldly,
Like have you ever seen something that I always think of that.
I always think of that.
I can see like the silver glint of these very sharp scissors,
You know,
Hanging in the middle of the air.
And I remember like doing a double take,
Being like,
Am I really seeing this?
Am I really seeing this?
That's,
That is connected.
It's like,
You know how retroactively sometimes you make a memory,
The memory is formed,
Like a different memory is formed because you learn new information.
Now somehow this has gotten connected in my head,
That moment of seeing the scissors.
With this other kind of mythic,
Magic,
Curious moment that when I was a baby,
My mother said I would get sick a lot,
Like I would have fevers a lot.
And I was a very cute baby,
Supposedly,
My mom says.
So in India,
You see babies that have this little black dot,
That sort of,
It's called to keep the nazar off because all these people coveting you,
It's like strong energy.
It's strong energy.
So my mom was like,
I would get sick,
I would get fevers all the time,
Like almost too often.
So one time she took me to this,
To this woman.
And I again,
I remember we were in this small house,
Like a really small house with lots of earth.
And I remember this woman burning red chilies with the seeds on a,
It's called a,
Oh God,
What is it called?
Like a frying pan.
I think it's like a tadka it's called in Hindi.
And without any oil.
And the searing,
And it was like some way to cleanse,
To take something away,
The nazar off me.
This is what I remember.
Someone must have told my mother,
Or maybe someone told my grandmother.
I don't know the whole story.
But when I'm saying it now,
Like those two things have gotten connected in my head in some inexplicable way,
That I was so sensitive to other people's gaze that I got sick all the time.
And then the scissors,
How do I don't,
I don't know.
Were the scissors just like the size of regular scissors?
Were they larger or?
They were like gardening shears.
Larger.
And were they open or closed?
Were they moving?
They weren't moving.
They were just like this,
Like a,
Like in a scissors,
Like just hanging like silver,
Glinting in the very hot sun.
And like literally it was like hanging in the middle of the air.
And I'm like,
What?
How?
Yeah.
I'm sure you've returned again and again to try to figure this out.
I haven't so much.
It's just there.
But when I think about it,
Every now and then,
I think about it because as a person who lives in poems,
I feel like I've lived in so many worlds in a moment.
When you write a poem,
When you dance,
You're living in all these other worlds at the same time.
And the refrain you often hear as an artist or a creative person who,
Or a spiritual person,
It's like,
But the real world.
The world is not like this.
The real world is different.
The real world is this,
This world of forms.
That,
That,
Maybe that's a symbol that scissors is like that.
All these worlds are as real.
I mean,
Like we,
We still live,
We live in a world where we don't know the origin and the end is what,
You know,
Like,
I mean,
It's,
You cannot say everything is known.
I don't know.
I feel I'm being called to believe in these wild worlds as that they are as real as maybe even more real.
Mera naam kya hai?
Main kaha se aayi hoon?
Such a story in one name.
There are wonders in my name.
Kehta hai kaun nalai bulbul ko be yasar?
Parde mein gul ke laal,
Kyaan bhi naam?
Kyaan bhi naam?
Kyaan bhi naam?
Kyaan bhi naam?
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