And Here You Are Living, Despite It All

This evening I’m going to see the wonderful Rupi Kaur perform at Leeds Museum. If you don’t recognise the name, chances are you’ll recognise her brief lines of poetry which are paired with line sketches, from all over Instagram, Pinterest and the like.

Back in 2015, Rupi Kaur created the theme of a university photography project (she has a degree in rhetoric studies from the University of Waterloo) around the taboo about menstruation. Doing so, she started a censorship ‘war’ with Instagram – who removed the image below, twice.

She fought back, writing the following on Facebook: "Thank you Instagram for providing me with the exact response my work was created to critique... I will not apologize for not feeding the ego and pride of misogynist society that will have my body in underwear but not be okay with a small leak when your pages are filled with countless photos/accounts where women (so many who are underage) are objectified, pornified and treated less than human."

Instagram eventually reinstated the image after Rupi Kaur’s post was liked by 53,000 people and shared over 12,000 times. They apologised to her, writing in a message: "A member of our team accidentally removed something you posted on Instagram. This was a mistake, and we sincerely apologise for this error."

 Fast forward a few years, Rupi Kaur is now a #1 New York Times bestseller, with milk and honey (her first collection of poetry) selling over 1.5 million copies. She has now released her second, the sun and her flowers. Rupi states she purposefully writes in lower case –

although i can read and understand my mother tongue (punjabi) i do not have the skillset to write poetry in it. to write punjabi means to use gurmukhi script. and within this script there are no uppercase or lowercase letters. all letters are treated the same. i enjoy how simple that is. how symmetrical and how absolutely straightforward. i also feel there is a level of equality this visuality brings to the work. a visual representation of what i want to see more of within the world: equalness.

and the only punctuation that exists within gurmukhi script is a period. which is represented through the following symbol: |

so in order to preserve these small details of my mother language I include them within this language. no case distinction and only periods. a world within a world. which is what i am as an immigrant. as a diasporic punjabi sikh woman. it is less about breaking the rules of english (although that’s pretty fun) but more about tying in my own history and heritage within my work.

Below is my favourite piece by her, a poem that resonates with me again and again.

If You Ever Need Someone, To Just Love You... If You Ever Need Someone, To Simply Adore You - I Will Be There, Standing By Your Side

I’m sitting here in one of my favourite tops, a billowy romanticist white shirt with floral embroidery at the top. Today it has mustard on both billowy sleeves and a button broken at the top – it’s been a bit of a messy day, with Big Cow burgers at Nation (yeah, being Vegan hasn’t quite kicked in yet) and fire alarm exits and texts to the ex. Today was a day of norms, full of special people and time spent in my favourite place, the place I’m proud to be calling home again – Leeds.

Today is International Happiness Day, and the first time I’ve blogged in months.

I’ve been coerced into it by a little university project, and I’m now going to go and blog about blogging (mind boggling) – however, I’m so happy to be writing. It feels like I haven’t had the time or volition in a long while to say anything, let alone anything worthwhile. I’m constantly torn between writing about hospital experiences and how being bipolar affects my life, or keeping quiet – I don’t want to seem like there’s nothing more to me and that it defines my life. Because honestly, for the most part it doesn’t. I forget how hard things have been. I forget I only left hospital for the last time two years and two days ago. Instead, I remember the feelings of happiness at my cousin and I winning articulate at every family gathering (dream team). I remember my friend’s sunny faces even when fogged by distant memory. I remember the way my sisters laugh when they collude, crumpling into each other on the sofa in my dad’s flat. I remember the way my dad lovingly rolls his eyes at me when I pop on another moody acoustic indie girl singing. I remember the way my mum tells me she’s proud, and my step-dad decorating my room with daffodils and yellow roses to welcome me home.

These things accumulate and make me who I am – not a mental health diagnosis. We can often find who we are, in what we are not. I’m not the best student, or very good at packing my lunches. I’m not a natural athlete, nor am I as fast at reading as I used to be. These things are all fine. They make me happy in the way that I know they are some little quirks that build me up and give me the identity I have today.

Today is International Happiness Day, and the first time I’ve blogged in months.

It isn’t always easy to do the things that make us happy – sometimes these things are terrifying, expensive or you just don’t bloody well know what makes you happy some weeks. We live in a world where we’re taught to crave more, expect less and live by the margins of what is socially acceptable. Well, how about we stick it to the man, watch Captain Fantastic (or Mulan) and always, ALWAYS try to remember you’re doing amazing just for being here. This isn’t simple, and life will hold different meanings for us all – but I figure the best we can do is to muddle through this together, be brave, be excellent to each other, love, and make this world a happier, slightly smaller place.