Rückenfigur

The Unbearable Weight of Being You

We are delighted to report that Dyuti Mishra has joined TBLM’s fiction team for Issue 59. Long-time fiction editor Shivani Mutneja had to temporarily take an unexpected leave of absence, and Dyuti stepped up in the nick of time. Based in Berlin, Dyuti brings a great deal of literary experience to her role. But more than mere technical expertise, she also brings a deep understanding and empathy for the writer’s struggles.

Which brings us to the banner image for this post. The above collage was composed from still images taken from Korean artist Kimsooja’s video art project Noodle Woman. The writeup on the Pérez Art Museum Miami website describes the project as follows:

“…In each projection, a lone figure wearing neutral gray clothes stands utterly motionless with her back to the camera, immersed amid a torrent of pedestrians. With this simple gesture, the artist exemplifies the perennial struggle to preserve a place for the individual within society, while embodying the experience of being engulfed within a foreign culture.”

The German language has a word, of course, for images of people standing with their backs to the viewer: Rückenfigur. Kimsooja’s motionless woman with “neutral gray clothes” is a Rückenfigur. It is also a curious and unexplained fact that a great many second-person and apocalyptic narratives (movies, novels) have a Rückenfigur as part of their cover image.

Dyuti Mishra’s essay explores her relationship with second-person narratives as well as a personal crisis: the creative mind confronted with debilitating mental health issues. It will, we believe, speak to you. Spoiler alert: there is hope.

---

Colophon: Second Person, Continuous

DYUTI MISHRA

I hate writing.

It’s so painful, isolating, frustrating an activity, and the returns are laughingly disproportionate to your input. There are no days off, no concrete metrics to mark your progress (Word count? Number of publications? Awards? These are signal metrics for success at best.), and rarely any social interaction. I absolutely hate writing and yet, it is the only thing I know and want to do. I know I wanted to write when I turned eleven and have since been working towards it in some shape or form. Yet, every time someone asks me what I do at a dinner party, it takes me a while to form the words - I am a writer.

This year, however, I’ve finally had a “breakthrough” (to borrow my therapist’s word). When asked the same question last weekend, the reply came so swiftly, I was shocked and proud of myself at the same time. I’m a writer, yes. I can finally slip into this identity comfortably. I am a writer even when I’m grocery shopping or working out in the gym or cleaning my cat’s litter box. I’m a writer even when I’m not writing. Did you say that to yourself today? Say it out loud. Repeat after me.

I AM A WRITER EVEN WHEN I’M NOT WRITING.

Good. Feel a bit queasy? Sit with it. Take a deep breath and let that weight sink in.

It hasn’t been a smooth road so far and heaven knows it’s only going to get bumpier from here on. But that’s okay. I feel good about this ride, positive even—if I may be so bold to say. Not because the tarot cards told me so or because I’m into new-age manifestation stuff, no. It’s just that I found a great editor to work with – my therapist.

#

My mid-life crisis was two years back when I moved to Europe and got laid off from my publishing job. If that sounds like a hyperbole, it is because I am a fiction writer and therefore have a propensity for it. Anyone who has left the insular safety of a corporate job to pursue a passion knows, that this act of bravado rapidly spirals into an identity crisis. My case is slightly more dramatic owing to my poor coping skills. I took this news as a blow to my ego and a bigger one to my identity. Long story short, I found myself in a psych ward on account of a nervous breakdown soon after.

If you like me grew up in the 90s, let me tell you this - there is nothing glamorous about mental illness. Quite the contrary. It’s nothing like Angelina Jolie in Girl, Interrupted or Christina Ricci in Prozac Nation. There is nothing poetic about being a tortured artist or a suffering writer. In fact, it is entirely counter-productive to your work. My mental illness is a colossal waste of time. It steals my time from me, doesn’t let me think with clarity or work on my projects. For the longest time, it was almost detrimental to my work. See, the thing about depression is it lies to you. Tells you you’re not good enough. Makes you jealous of your peers who are on their way to reaching their literary goals. Depression is like a villainess from one of those Hindi soaps my mom watches — She’s a toxic witch with a B.
 
Two years ago I let that witch get the best of me. I bought the lies she sold and woke up to realise it was all a scam. That’s when I decided to kill my pride and ask for help. Instead of signing up for yet another workshop or buying yet another book on craft I directed my savings towards a better investment for my career and found a good therapist. Suffice to say, I haven’t looked back since. Sure, it’s great to be a part of a community and as a writer, there’s also a need to find that circle where you can workshop your projects or gossip about the industry. I’ve been very fortunate to have that experience and am definitely grateful for all the times I have received feedback on my work. I have come a long way in terms of my craft. But while workshops help you become a better writer, who will help you become a better person?

As a chronic depressive, mental health tends to feature prominently in my work. Sometimes it is a jump-board from which I let ideas develop; sometimes it is the main plot. Simply put - it is what I know best and so I write what I know. For the good part of a decade, I let my illness be my unwitting muse. I let it take over and inform my art and identity. Allowed it to dictate my voice as a writer. It still does to some extent. In my work, I have a predilection for narrating using the second-person point-of-view (POV). It is a voice I most favour, the perspective I think in. As writers, we tend to be creatures of habit. We find our comfort (or discomfort) zones and try to work them into our craft. For me, it is the second-person POV. So? You might ask. What’s new about that? Plenty of writers have used this before. Lorrie Moore in her short fiction, Jay McInerney in Bright Lights, Big City, Italo Calvino—famously—in If on a Winter’s Night.  I do not know why, but my best writing comes to me when I’m thinking in this particular manner.

it’s always a kick when I present something in the second person at a workshop. That usually ensues a long discussion on craft and technique among my peers and sometimes results in a writing exercise for all of us. If you’ve ever been a part of a writers’ workshop you know you always want to be **that** person. A writer’s writer. The validation does wonders for your hubris. It comes by so rarely after all. So, four years back, bolstered by my peers’ encouraging words, I decided to embark on an ambitious project — writing a novel in the second person POV. It started off easy; the first five chapters out within weeks. I could do this, I told myself. This is easy. So confident was I in my capability that I sent the pages out to the workshop. I knew I wanted validation and knew exactly where to get it. Lo and behold as they say.

Why then, three months in, did I find myself stuck? I knew I had the material, the voice, the broad contours of a plotline but I was frozen in my tracks, stuck in a quagmire of my own making. That very voice, the one I had honed and used and dictate my identity, was now muffled. I knew something had gotten in the way but didn’t know what that was.

So I put this draft away and went on with my life. My plan of action, any time I find myself facing a cul-de-sac, is to educate myself further. I found a job in publishing and let my days be consumed by reading works from other writers. I read on the job, for the job and after the job. Read to figure out where I was going wrong. The days turned to weeks, months to a whole year, then another. Somewhere down I’d given up on the problem and was now safely ensconced in this role. I didn’t need to be a writer, I told myself, I could do this instead. And I didn’t revisit the draft, didn’t try to work my way out. Until that is, I was laid off and had my subsequent meltdown.

#

“Why do you speak in the second person?” my therapist asked while I was mid-sentence, ranting about writing or purpose or some-such.

“What?” I asked, completely confounded by this change in the direction of the conversation.

“When you need to say something difficult, you switch into second person. You use “you” instead of “I”. It’s like you keep wanting to distance yourself from your experience. Why is that?”

Oh shit.

Here it was. The question I never asked myself. The question I was never asked in all the workshops and writing sessions I had been to. This was the exact question that the dormant draft was asking of me and the very answer to my problem. The distance from my experience. That’s where I was going wrong. I had found the voice to articulate that distance without actually writing from a place of distance.

#

Over the years, I’ve watched social media infringe on our life and time to a degree where the performativity of writing has actually taken over the very act. The pressure to have a writerly presence online, to be seen and known over being read. Technology and big publishing tell us to feed the algorithm with images and accounts of our daily toil; then silently use that very algorithm to steal more time from us. It’s easy to lose sight of why you do what you do amidst the din. It’s okay to do that too. But make sure you find something or someone (in my case, my therapist) that reminds you why you write in the first place.

There are some clichés you’ll inadvertently come across if you are a writer. Show, don’t tell. Write from your scars, not your wounds. I get that now—at least that second one. There’s a beautiful ego death that happens once you’ve put enough distance between yourself and your work. The stakes get lower, the ideas come swooping down and writing becomes enjoyable again. Choosing my therapy sessions over crit-circle meetings has taught me how to find the joy in writing again. It has taught me to stop measuring my worth in output and write for the creation of it all. With the weight of results out of the picture, I’m free to enjoy the best part of the process – the writing.

——
DYUTI MISHRA is an ex-journalist, writer and translator based in Berlin. She is currently working on her first novel Side Effects. Her work has been featured in Scroll, The Hindu, India Today, Vogue, GQ, Femina and other publications. When she is not fighting to survive the German winter, she enjoys reading fiction, watching trashy shows, vintage shopping on eBay and doing her cat's bidding.

---

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

(a) Banner image: © Kimsooja. A Needle Woman (Cairo, Delhi, Lagos, London, Mexico City, New York, Shanghai, Tokyo), 1999-2001. Eight-channel video installation, silent. Duration: 6:33 minute loop. Courtesy of Kimsooja Studio.

We hope you enjoyed reading this issue of Crow & Colophon. Subscribe for free to receive updates about The Bombay Literary Magazine and notes of a literary persuasion.