Institutional Imprisonment VII

I said I’d do at least seven of these and then I got distracted as usual but here we are seventh one and I may add more in the future but for now I think this one will safely conclude the first installation of this series (just came up with that: calling it an installation). Since I think I’ve exhausted the structure of the theory and the skeleton of it and why it is original etc I kind of now want to return to the fact that this is a public journal and just write from the heart rather than be all cerebral / academic about it because that’s precisely why I chose to do this in the first place. I’m going to see what comes up in my mind, write about it, keep the language natural and keep that flow until we wrap this up. And first, I want to address something that has been swirling around for some time and I’ll probably go deeper on this later but for now let me put it this way: I’M TIRED OF PEOPLE WONDERING WHY I DON’T HAVE A FAMILY OR A CHILD OR A PARTNER. Yes, all-caps.

I have a family. The one I had when I was born. Kind of.

I don’t have a child because several years ago I made the decision to have an abortion so I could continue my education and only have a child when I was mentally, emotionally, and materially prepared.

And I don’t have a partner because I’ve developed the type of personality and way of being, which, alongside strong helpings of treating a mental illness, has meant I haven’t had space for anyone in my life let alone a full-time relationship.

I genuinely didn’t / don’t feel it would be fair to the person I choose to be in a relationship with because I’m a lot to handle. Or at least I was. I've done a lot of work on myself so hopefully I won’t always be but you know it’s about a feeling. So when it feels right I’m sure I’ll make the effort. I’m definitely open to it. Which is why this whole idea of me being a baby killing / anti-relationship / anti-marriage / promiscuous / morally questionable woman is just ridiculous: just because I’m honest about things that people keep hidden doesn’t make me controversial for the sake of attention or even righteous, but just human, you know? Human. Imperfect. Not doing the public dance of let's pretend I'm perfect or at least deny everything until I am.

Whatever standard you have of me in your mind that tells you that I should be a certain way is a standard I don’t care about at all because you created that - not me. I care deeply about non-violence. And I understand emotional desire and pain. But don't confuse me not meeting your demands for me not being a good person. If that's your basic issue then by all means feel free to walk away. Don't punish me for not doing what you want just because you want it and I don't. Don't call things "unhealthy" when it suits your idea of what is "healthy" because that has nothing to do with who I am and reality. It's just about control. And I cannot apologise for prioritising my wants above yours. Especially when I'm actually being completely reasonable and you're just hoping by making me seem unreasonable you can get me to negotiate my boundaries. If my boundaries are a problem for you then the problem is you: not me.

Now, moving on to India’s 80th Independence Day, which was August 15th 2026. I woke up to an electricity blackout in my penthouse in Doha and I had to move to a nearby hotel while they fixed it and it was strangely meaningful to me (as many things are) because I suddenly realized how the metaphor I’ve clung to for dear life and it’s relationship to the climate crisis is so relevant: Doha, Indian Independence, electricity shortage - our dependence on energy whilst living in an interdependent, diverse, conflicted world where we celebrate Independence and need dependence at the same time. Something like that.

Indian Independence is a deeply emotional subject for me despite the fact that I’ve been an NRI (Non-Resident Indian) for most of my life. I can’t quite explain it. From a social justice perspective the idea that Britain owes nothing to colonies kind of sounds like how America owes nothing to its racist past: tone-deaf, ignorant, and infuriating. So when real efforts are made to acknowledge or amend those wounds - for example creating the Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Meritorious Award at Edinburgh University, and at my very own school nonetheless (I'm an alumna of The School of Social & Political Science) - that really matters to me.

It creates a sense of meaning that is healing for someone who has tried to compensate for the fact that I can never fully occupy an identity, which is both a part of me and imposed on me. It’s my way of loving something that I haven’t always been loved for by myself or others. And that emotion having a place in British education - which is basically all my higher education: yes, that’s profoundly meaningful to me. I cried. I felt like more than anything else I've ever achieved, that award, it creates a sense of legacy that I so desire. I'm not taking credit for it. I'm saying I am backing it with all my heart because I have put my heart into wanting to make that kind of representative change. People talk about decolonizing curriculums and racism and diversity year after year after year. When they actually do something about it that makes me feel something I try to acknowledge it before any cynicism creeps in and destroys it. Because at the end of the day I’m still living with the same hope many, many others do as well: that we can improve the state of the world and make amends for the past, present, and future. Without that hope what else do we have?

And when I think about the true reason that matters so much to me it isn’t because I am bitter or resentful or confused, which can be a lot of the resistance or criticism I face for being vocal about these issues. It’s actually because it affects my identity at my core. The Indian diaspora is large and we are all individuals with a shared history. I cling to institutions despite feeling imprisoned by them because they not only defend my intellectual interests and abilities but because they allow me to adopt identities that cannot so obviously be weaponized culturally and politically like the Indian identity can. For example: if I didn’t make an effort with the Indian students on campus then I’m ashamed of my identity, if I speak out against what’s going on in India politically then I’m ashamed of my identity and betraying everyone or patronising the people who never left their home country, if I try to talk about a more nuanced understanding of what it means to be me then I am still not accepting a part of who I am: because the fact that I was born there and have a connection the place is not enough. It will never be enough. No, if I claim a connection then I must bleed and until I do I can never be fully accepted no matter how much love I have in my heart or how much I try to do because the fact that I left makes me different and that difference is the source of all emotion - not anything else I do.

It hurts. A lot. But I get it. I understand.

Sometimes people can’t help but see things as one foot in the door and one foot out when actually there is no door for me: I just have always seamlessly transitioned from one identity to another, one language to another, one culture to another, one country to another, and no one expected me to do anything other than that. Ultimately when that can lead to extreme feelings of loneliness institutions do paradoxically give you a sense of freedom and release that none of that can. A way to say all of that matters - sure - but I am also a person for whom none of that can matter and I am still a human being. It’s like escaping a cult to join a different one. Anything to not feel like you are being compromised. But neither institutionalization nor socialization ever completely accepts us as what we are and it’s not always bad. People always remind me that I’m different because of my upbringing when I bring this up but truth be told despite how different I am what I’m feeling can still be felt by others in vastly different circumstances. They just aren’t able to do anything about it. And that's the difference that places me on Venus and them on Mars.

Am I Jesus Christ on the cross? Absolutely not. People think it’s naive or dumb to be so open and honest. You have to be a bit more clever to navigate this world. Say the things that don’t make you a target. As if that’s a choice. When people police me with lessons about social inequality and privilege I have to laugh because I think about all of that all the time and that is why I know that what I’m advocating for has nothing to do with social inequality and privilege - not in the obvious sense. What matters more and what we often underestimate is the power of individuals and character: there is evidence of it everywhere. Lesbians getting married in rural villages whilst rich, cultured cities suffer from homophobia. That exists in the world. How do you explain that? You don’t. Because the premise it operates from isn’t actually about cultural contradiction or dissonance: it’s about how something is handled and what is made permissible despite society. And as much as I believe in development, education, and equality as being the long-term antidotes I truly do think that in the same way we can’t know for certain who is going to end up becoming a dangerous criminal, we can’t know who is going to end up having extraordinary compassion in situations that require exactly that. If I were to use a much more personal example: the idea of being able to accept a multicultural identity and not try to force it into a tribalist version has been in my life the most compassionate thing anyone has every done for me. That is compassion to me because I can acknowledge history and I do so deliberately because it’s important for us to recognize how far we have come and how far we can go without falling victim to the same social mechanisms that held us back in the past. But that cannot mean I discard parts of my true self to become a more idealised version of a person that fits someone else's agenda. Sovereignty, identity, pride: sure, but in the name of exclusion and hatred? What kind of Independence is that?

That’s why I try to be so transparent and honest. Because to me that is the true meaning of independence and it need not hinder anyone else’s freedom: the very fact that its existence can make others feel that they are losing their sense of community is what should make us question what we have built community around. Forcing life to be something manufactured solely for others makes us lose our humanity more than gain it. That deteriorates community more than it creates it. It causes grief more than peace as some would say because appeasement always has a purpose and if the purpose is to prioritize the desires of another rather than what genuinely works for collective well-being then what are we appeasing for? Honesty doesn’t have to be a crime when it actually isn’t a crime. It doesn’t have to be protest or dissent. It doesn’t have to break the law. Because many people have spent lifetimes hoping for these things to change and they never did and we persist for generations and witness realities that are going to continue to exist according to majority preference or power. That is something none of us can escape or magically reorder. But in my own experience it often isn’t the whole world that needs to change. Sometimes it’s just the people who you decided to let in. Those you have come to love. Those who became yours when you were born. No borders, no countries, no language or law: just a human connection. It feels so radical and rare but it is not. The capacity exists everywhere. Sometimes I feel like we need to forget that just so that we have some kind of drama that keeps the world turning. We need senseless violence because that has always been a form of entertainment. We create it and then watch it from afar as if aliens have invaded the Earth and we are the helpless audience to some kind of theatre that we don’t have the script for. But that we apparently paid for. Most of the time we have no idea how we paid but there it is: the show goes on. Big words. Big names.

It all evaporates when you let it.

For me my theory my art my rants my writing my anguish my pain my isolation my trauma my mental health my relationships my love my hate it is all about that evaporation: that ephemeral, transient nature of what it means to be this human at this moment in time in the world, with these unique circumstances, and a fate, if it exists. My art is where I go to see all of that for what it is: as random and incomprehensible as the entire universe itself. And then I get reminded of the senseless death of children. I say death. I mean murder. And as someone who is a pro-choice activist (basically - I kind of had no choice given the state of the world) I know what my mind is doing. It’s saying you can look at all the pictures of outer space and the entire unknowable universe but you cannot escape the fact that this life you have through which you perceive all of this is within a species that has the ability to both be wonderful and monstrous and you are not going to get salvation by believing that you are somehow in one category over another, or that you are something else entirely. No. You are human and to be human is to be both wonderful and monstrous.

The theories, the writing, the feeling, the human condition - the repetition - the predictable quality of it all. All the books I’ll never read. All the movies I’ll never watch. All the places and people I will never see or meet. All the hatred and love I will experience. What is it all for? I don’t want the meaning of life. I don’t want to be the character in a Woody Allen movie (I did once upon a time because they spoke to me as they do to many). What I want is the ability to love, to feel love, and also to have the courage to communicate it without becoming the kind of person who refuses to acknowledge the monstrosity of it all. History and identity explain us but they can never confine us. We aren’t tied to them in the way we often believe, in the way our socialization and emotions make us feel - no, you see, I believe there is a place within all of us where none of that governs the soul or the spirit. And where all of it governs the darkest sides of us. That’s why I know I’m going to need transport from Heaven to Hell and Hell to Heaven because they’ll both want me and reject me several times as I have done to myself on Earth.

Yes, if I’m being honest that’s what my art is about: that freedom I seek from that perpetual journey between Heaven and Hell. The true, full human form.

As I’ve exhausted over and over again: every human being exists as more than any single judgement, category, identity, achievement, failure, or moral evaluation can contain. What happens when institutions designed to make people legible begin demanding that people become coherent? Well, for me I left those institutions and went straight to the mental hospital. The acute ward. I went from institutions to what we know as being admitted. Psychiatric diagnoses. And I’m not saying mental health isn’t clinical and deserving of a medical category distinct from our social conflicts: because it absolutely is. Just like cancer, a mental illness is an illness. What I’m actually saying is they're just not as far apart as we often think - the institutions that make us legible and demand coherence and the institutions some of us end up in when we can't be coherent: there isn't a strict line saying this is sanity and this is insanity.

So you can medicate, and treat, and you should. I am medicated. I have been in treatment. I am mentally ill. Be as uncomfortable about it as you possibly can.

But just because my legibility doesn’t translate to automatic coherence, just because I am both sane and insane, doesn’t mean I’m any less human.

That contradiction does not have to be resolved for a person to be real, for a person to be free, for a person to exist.

And I am real, and I am free, and yes, I do exist.

We all exist.