A THOUSAND FUNERALS
Anjali is a Communications Studies student at Mount Carmel College. A lover of poems, films and letters— she wants to write and continue experimenting with various forms. She believes in the need to remain curious, kind and passionate about stories. In her journalism and developmental communication work, she is committed to telling stories that drive change.
When not reading or making delightfully strange films with her peers, you can find her creeping on bugs, drinking chai or making weird clay creatures.
Note
I remember during the unholy year of 2020, at the strange liminal stage of being 17 and needing to make a resume without knowing who I was, I had at one point turned to my dreams. I would feverishly type every detail onto a Google doc set aside for meaning-making and then offer the passably coherent sentences to the nearest clairvoyants. (Due to the lockdown, google and my sisters had to do). Of course, as skilled as they were in story-telling and meaning-making there was not much they could do with pulsing images of a tower on fire, a psychedelic sun, an inanimate me conversing with a TV show character (who was also me) about doing my taxes during Christmas brunch.
Looking back, at all the other ways I approached my identity including this one, I had consciously set myself up to fail— only looking within and hoping to find a crystal ball revealing a character script when at best what I would get was a horrifying understanding of what the human nervous system looked like.
I may not be my dreams and feelings but what I am is an amalgamation of all of those, the way I think, my memories, and everyone and everything I love. I am me when I notice the way the sharp slab of sunlight falls on the floor. I am my grandmother when I spend too long staring at a bubbling pot of tea on the stove. I am my friend when I spend hours walking to nowhere. I am my mother’s fierce care, my father’s curiosity, my grandfather’s hand when it touches a blank page, my sisters’ humour and my brother’s goodness. And I am all of them when I love deeply. The only time, I felt like I had a sense of what it means to be a young adult, and more importantly human, was when I was aware of this constant ‘becoming’. To loosely echo Heidi Priebe, to live and to love is to attend a thousand funerals of who you used to be throughout your life.
I am privileged to witness and be a part of yours’ and Pulse’s becoming, through this issue.