She was a leading television journalist in her heyday who rose through the ranks to become a star business news anchor at KTN. Then fame and fortune crept up on her, sending her on a spiral of alcoholism, infidelity and depression.
She would have been 70 today. Modesta Mukwanjiru Gatandi. My mum.
I wasn’t that close to her throughout my life. I was led to believe that I was raised by my dad from when I was little. Three months old to be precise. I didn’t breastfeed much either. Apparently, mum spent most of that period in medical school, studying to become a doctor but ended up as a clinical officer, which is, well, somewhat a doctor but without the conventional degree.
There were medical colleges in her time that offered equivalents in diplomas. And she had a good number of those, enough to surpass even that one, I dare presume. I found a stash of them later as I rummaged through her stuff after the burial.
Coming to terms with the undisclosed details of her life was dreadfully embarrassing in many ways. Knowing I hardly knew her and rendezvousing with people, circumstances and situations that came to the fore on the go, whether on issues of continuity, incomplete ventures, contributions, collections or the downright unfinished business of the unresolved or unexpressed emotional kind. One by one, they surfaced to my starkly mind.
Drafting of her eulogy
I even surprisingly got to learn during the drafting of her eulogy that her birthday fell on the International Lovers Day, the 14th of February.
That was a hitter!
My mum’s death launched a very dark, uncharted chapter in my life. She had been sick for a long time, high blood pressure and diabetes and all the complications that came with it. She was in and out of hospital and I thought it was another one of those. I was going through a really stormy season while she was in hospital.
While I visited her regularly to check up on her and take her home-made meals as she hated hospital food, I was dealing with some personal drama involving a long term boyfriend, Saraswati, who had turned on me when he uncovered a deception I had concealed for a long time.
I had been having an affair with another man throughout most of the duration of our relationship. In fact, when he discovered this, he had asked me to move out of the home we had shared for almost four years of our relationship, but my mum’s admission to hospital delayed that.
Aida Muturia.
I remember the irony of being so relieved that mum was in hospital that I didn’t have to move out because I did not know where to go or how to start.
You see, my life was pegged around Saraswati’s lifestyle and conditioning. He paid the rent, took care of the bills, the meals, the shopping and anything else, recurrent or otherwise. I travelled everywhere using cabs that were at my disposal, as and when I dialled. That too, paid, not to mention a flurry of expensive gifts and jewellery.
We dined out regularly in fancy restaurants and hit exclusive clubs during the weekends. Every so often, we’d take a drive out of town to the enthralling and pristine coastal locations or wilderness safaris in the Serengeti or Masai Mara.
My employment earnings, which were meagre in comparison, went to mostly purchasing the latest trends of wardrobe, shoes and handbags. Or I’d simply lounge out with friends.
I was a young and popular financial news broadcast journalist and anchor at the time, with the premier television news station, Kenya Television Network, (KTN). I was only 24. My star was shooting high and my career was thriving. I had more suitors than I could care to count. The newsroom phones would ring off the hook with groupies leaving barrages of flattery and compliments about my fashion sense, hairstyles or exquisite make-up, leaving their phone numbers, sending gifts or wanting to take me out on a date.
The bold ones would straight out proclaim their eternal love and want to marry me in an instant or declare that they would divorce their wives if I just said the word! It was easy to get lost in the fame, and sometimes I would, but the spotlight was ever so shining in daylight or moonlight. My business was everyone’s business.
I met Maloy as I was dating Saraswati. He was equally well-to-do. Both of them were. I didn’t have to think about money—as I hadn’t all my life. I had a pretty modest but comfortable upbringing. My dad was a career politician. We had our ups and downs as he got elected in and voted out of parliament and government but we were mostly well off.
My mum later resigned from government employment and became a self-made entrepreneur, but it was not of her own choosing even though sometimes I muse over how that twist in her tale elevated her financially beyond her peasant government salary. She had been a clinical officer in the city for most of her life.
But in an unprecedented and sudden move orchestrated by my dad, she was forced to vacate her home of over twenty years and relocate to the country. Apparently, my dad had another woman in his life, a discovery that my mum had made when she inadvertently lifted a receipt off of his suit coat pocket, disclosing a fees note made out to a name, a male name bearing his name – I beg your pardon, surname: Tangazo Mzee.
Love affair
Turns out this was a young lad, his son – a teenager as a matter of fact – who, together with the woman, Watatu, had been in his life for a very long time. No one could figure out exactly how long this love affair had evolved, but the boy was a teenager now! Watatu happened to be his wife, legal status unverified though probability high given that she was wearing his ring, as was sneakily visible later in a series of coerced introductions to the rest of the family and more so the legalisation of polygamy in this end of the world where civil law had been brought into line with customary law, allowing a man previously allowed only one wife to take on multiple partners.
My mum was a second wife under customary marriage. My dad, Mzee had taken a first wife before her through civil marriage. Now the two laws were merged and my dad had taken a third wife. The revelation, though shocking to my mum, wasn’t entirely strange, except for the formality of it, given my dad’s not so indistinct reputation.
He had been an Assistant Minister in the Kenya government at the time and had just lost his election to Parliament for another term but among the entitlements for his position was a two-storey residential property in one of the opulent neighbourhoods of the city, under the Civil Servants Housing Scheme.
For the duration of his service in government, and unbeknownst to my mum or the larger family, this home had housed his secret family. So when he was ousted, his vacation notice was applicable immediately, and that’s how mum emerged as the sitting target.
Her home, the ultimate sacrifice. She didn’t have much time to pack her stuff but the ‘eviction’ was inescapable. She landed in the country, my dad’s native village, where she was vaguely acquainted.
There was no space immediately available for her on landing so she was directed to an empty, long abandoned warehouse, which with the support of a few villagers was partitioned using soft boards to create bedrooms for us kids to settle in as our bedrooms for a few years to come. That’s as far as privacy went.
She would soon launch a successful medical clinic, one of the few at the time and grow her wealth in a relatively short period of time.
So even when I started my broadcast journalism career, mum was always somewhere behind me, visiting often, supplementing my income and always supplying me with lots of food and groceries. I never really understood the value or scarcity save for brief moments that passed barely noticed.
Deep affection
I never did love Saraswati. I did develop a deep affection for him, though, except for matters of the heart. He was an incredibly kind and gentle human being, God rest his soul. I felt indebted to him, so I sold myself for a loveless relationship.
Saraswati had been a secret admirer for a good number of years preceding our first encounter. He saw me first on KTN and fell in love, at first sight. Subsequently he started this weekly and year-long tradition of sending magnificent flower baskets to my office from “Anonymous.”
The flowers were a sight to behold and never ceased to cause a stir in the newsroom, especially because they came so regularly that the older ones never quite wilted by the time the new ones arrived. My fellow queens of the screen were ever green with envy.
Often I would passively pluck stems from the stalks and distribute them to them and any other colleagues, who eagerly grabbed them at a moment’s opportunity, perhaps for themselves, perhaps to impress their loved ones. Sometimes when they were so completely glorious and stunning, I would merrily carry them home, place them as the centrepiece of my living room nook.
I didn’t pay that much attention all the same.
At other times I would return to sender when I was in a bad mood or upset that this human could not muster the courage to identify himself, tag his card, or simply write a note. It used to really irk me in those moments, and on one of the occasions, I called up the flower company on whose behalf Saraswati sent the baskets to raise the issue with the proprietor.
“Who is this man?” I would complain, “And why can’t he just call?”
Down the months, he grew on me as I started noticing how persistent and consistent he had been at this gesture. I was secretly pleased. I also loved the gifts and eagerly awaited them. I gradually grew this anticipation to put a face to his name and perhaps even, indulge him. In many ways, I may have already developed feelings for him. Default mode perhaps, but I smiled everywhere, all the time.
Former KTN journalist Aida Muturia (left) and a friend.
He would eventually drop his business card in one of the baskets. And now I knew his name, his title and career scape, and I also got to know where he worked, building, floor and company name. He was involved in the oil industry. He was the head honcho of finance.
By now the flowers had given way to full-fledged gift baskets bearing chocolates, perfumes, premium wines and all sorts of accompanying treats—waffles, truffles, nuts and fruits.
I got hooked!
Of course I did!
At long last he called me when I least expected it. His voice was deep and authoritative, but there was something about his accent that I couldn’t quite warm up to. He had a deep native accent that pronounced r’s as l’s and l’s as r’s! It was kind of off-putting but I overlooked it for now. After all, no one deserved to be judged by the accent of their dialect.
We arranged to meet at one of the newly launched, high end, boutique hotels at the time. The Grand Regency. He clearly was out to impress.
Disappointed
The first time I saw Saraswati, I was a bit disappointed. Already by the voice of the phone call, I was ambivalent. He had a slight hunch back, a protruding tummy, his face was long, puffy and his head was bigger than his body. His buttocks were flat, I noticed when he excused himself and walked towards the bathroom.
Not to mention a sloppy walk. He was slightly knock-kneed, and his overall physique was less than impressive. He wasn’t good looking, at all. I was immediately repulsed by him. His English dialect didn’t help matters, and on top of everything, his entire front teeth were decayed. Quite frankly, I was done before I began.
I couldn’t concentrate on our conversation as I scrutinised all these aspects while he ordered me exorbitant drinks and we dined in luxury. My attention was scattered all through the evening. In his smittenness, he didn’t notice.
He was really smartly dressed though: crisply ironed peach shirt, expensive looking, pricey timepiece, bespoke footwear, and well-groomed top to bottom. He wore a mild and sublime cologne, and I could tell he was very wealthy.
As we finished and headed out to his car, he gentlemanly opened the door for me, his metallic green BMW.
When I look back on those times, in hindsight, on particularly gloomy days when it feels like my life has been a series of contemptible decisions, I wonder what kind of maturity deficit I was suffering, because—how could I judge someone so harshly on appearance? I mean his looks, physical frame and twang.
I remember feeling cold towards him soon after our first date. His overall image did nothing to convince me to meet him a second time, despite his affluence and effort. I avoided him altogether and declined to respond to his communications. I never revealed why. Yet, he continued his ritualistic gift sending. Never did he falter.
Psychologically, I had disconnected after our first meeting. But I did enjoy the gifts tremendously, even though I didn’t acknowledge them.
It wasn’t until a couple of months down the line that we serendipitously met at yet another prestigious hotel where he was hanging out with some industry colleagues, and we sort of reconnected. I wasn’t dating anyone seriously at the time and neither was he, so we kind of fell into the flow of the moment, and soon we started getting together every so often without really assigning much importance to it.
Ms Aida Muturia during the interview with the Nation at her home in Meru on August 06, 2021.
I could tell he was ecstatic about it by the way he treated me, showered me with attention and compliments at every opportunity and somehow, eventually, I let down my guard.
I didn’t know where my heart was as far as Saraswati was concerned. I just, well, we were spending a lot of time together, I loved the way he spoiled me, the company, the travels, the soirees. I didn’t know any single man at the time who had been so completely dedicated and gone out of his way for me the way this man did.
I literally fell for and fed off of it. And I didn’t even notice I was on the ride of life with him without having acknowledged it to myself. I was also bored and tired of the dating scene, less than serious suitors and all, most of them stone broke with abundant flair but no ambition. So it was easy to be with Saraswati for his effort, attention, and indulgences rather than for romance. It felt that way anyway. I was passively into him with zero connection.
Dating
I remember from the outset of dating, he used to move heaven and earth to make sure I was happy. My job didn’t pay me well at the time, so the extra financial privileges from Saraswati made me feel secure in settling with him.
I promised myself that I would learn to love him eventually. It was a weak attempt of a pledge, though, because somehow I never did. There was a cardinal twist to the failed pledge.
If ever I thought about giving romance a compromise, one thing could have saved the day. This department I considered important enough to make me forego any and all qualities I had rejected. What if he was an incredible lover? A perfect invitation to slip into oblivion.
But, Saraswati had a problem. Premature ejaculation. I remember screaming inside my head, “Oh f*** no! This too? How much worse could it get, God?”
Naturally that situation evolved into a relationship that grew woefully skin deep, pretentious, and self-serving, perfect on all fronts from the outside but miserable and frivolous on the inside. I fell in love, instead, with the lifestyle.
We did move in together to a leafy suburb after about three months of dating, and I remember just before we did, he proposed and I politely diverted his attention, “We have a whole lifetime to be together, no need to rush”, as I pretentiously bided time to escape this undesirable fate. His jaw dropped and his face flushed with disappointment, but since I had agreed to live with him, it made up for the unfavourable outcome of the engagement.
We did try to get him some help for the sexual condition, nothing elaborate nor specialist kind of medical or therapeutic appointments. Just drugs here, rubs there – off the counter. Yet still, he did not sexually satisfy me to the extent it eventually led me into another man’s arms, saturated with a sexually charged, whirlwind affair.
I spent most of my free time with Maloy, who made every moment of our experience utterly ecstatic. He was a monster in the bedroom and treated me like a goddess. He was my total man. I couldn’t have been happier!
But Maloy had a girlfriend in another town as I came to find out, directly from him. A long term girlfriend, who years later became his wife. I loved being with Maloy, though, to this day, I have somehow never wrapped my mind around the nature of my feelings for him, except that we had a deep, raw, and sensual connection.
I tend to think sometimes that we were inseparable because almost every moment when we were not doing anything else, we were together. His girlfriend, Akothe sooner or later came to uncover our affair right about the time as Saraswati did likewise. The pretty fairy-tale suddenly turned ugly.
About that time, I discovered I was pregnant. It was definitely Maloy’s because I hardly had any intimacy anymore with Saraswati. And of course there was the issue of timing. Maloy and I were together daily. A day did not pass when we were not. The pregnancy discovery coincided with mum’s admission to hospital and Saraswati’s demand that I move out of the home we had shared for nearly five years.
Lose touch
Maloy and I also started to lose touch as I presume he was also mending matters on his side. I remember one of the last conversations I ever shared with Maloy regarding the pregnancy when I delivered the news to him and subsequently asked him what ‘we’ should do.
“Whatever you decide babe, I will support you”, he said.
Didn’t seem like much of a confidence vote given the circumstances. He had no particular emotion written on his face, so I couldn’t read his real intention. I did not have time to process, though, as mum was in hospital.
Concurrently, I was having an issue at the office where I was in line for a promotion as the editor of the business section, a position I had been acting in for a time. Confirmation in the position had been stalling because my immediate boss at the time, Zambezi, was apparently ‘saving’ the position for a buddy of his and former co-worker, Majimbo, whose contract with the BBC in London was up in the air.
It was a precarious time for me, professionally, as well. I had become a heavy drinker, so I channelled my emotions into alcohol most times when out of the limelight. A functioning alcoholic I would say, although that too was to later have its consequences.
Life, as I knew it, had started spiralling. A self-destructive path, flirting with suicide. Only this one was happening by instalments. I could feel every ounce of life and every single thing I held on to being taken away from me.
When mum was breathing her last, I had cordoned myself off from the world, secretly checked into a semi upmarket hotel facility in the city. I felt like a pressure cooker whose nozzle was thrusting to pop.
The deteriorating state of affairs between Saraswati and me had hit fever pitch. I was no longer in touch with Maloy. I had suddenly stopped visiting and sending mum food and spending the days with her. I had taken leave from work for this purpose, but even then I remember abusing the employment code of conduct by taking unofficial leave days without the rightful protocols.
Saraswati’s pressure for me to vacate had escalated, thanks to my Dunning-Kruger stunt to dangle the pregnancy carrot as a last ditch attempt to not get kicked out. I saw my whole lifestyle slide down domino style. I couldn’t imagine life without the luxuries that had become granted in my everyday life.
“How was I going to start again on my own?”
My job was on the line as a result of disciplinary breaches, and even so my salary afforded me the comforts I was accustomed to. I neither had a car, nor could I drive. I was used to being chauffeured around in cabs when I was not with Malloy or Saraswati. I couldn’t have cared less about the bills. The idea of public transportation became a raw reality.
Miserable salary
I panicked. “How would I go from cabs to commuting?”, let alone what my nationwide audience would think seeing me mingling amongst them!
“And what about my heels?”
I graced the country’s TV screens every night, offering the quintessential celebrity image and the lifestyle that came with it. The sheer thought made me cringe. I also lived with Saraswati in the upscale neighbourhood called Upperhill. It was the in vogue of the brand new and hot residential places to stay in the city.
Vacating only meant my miserable salary would afford me residential status in the downbeat outskirts of the city. Everything had been done for me, from fancy meals to lavish living. Going out to plush joints and clubs and never contemplating bills were a second nature.
Saraswati saw through my blatant lies. In fact, he was disgusted. The contempt written on his face was enough to scorch the earth to nothing. He couldn’t believe how low a human being could stoop to try to save herself. Of course the pregnancy wasn’t his. It wasn’t even a discussion. In a last ditch attempt to change his mind, I played the last desperate card I had left. I disappeared into this hotel without speaking to anyone of my whereabouts. I abandoned my mum in hospital.
I was a ball of anxiety, I wasn’t thinking straight. I binged on alcohol and chain smoked 24 hours a day, holed up in this four-walled room. I blacked out when I was too drunk to stay up and even then, the sleep wouldn’t last more than three hours. I was too stressed out to sleep, my body was exhausted, but my mind wouldn’t shut down.
At some point, I became delirious and somehow called Saraswati, disclosing my location. My last-ditch trick was a pure miss. Nobody had looked for me. Nobody seemed worried. I was screaming to be rescued. I was mentally and emotionally exhausted, drained and my body felt like it was shutting down. I just wanted to get out of this room.
Saraswati was swift to respond! It didn’t take him fifteen minutes to arrive, so I thought something had worked. Ready to reconcile, at last!
“How long have I been away?” I thought I asked.
“What?”
“Never mind!”
“Ten days, or thereabouts.” He wasn’t pleasant, nor was he nasty when he came. He didn’t show any particular emotion, but my perception was hazy from a hangover and a throbbing headache, so how could I tell what he was thinking? He politely gestured that I follow him to the car.
I obeyed.
The way the sun hit my face I wanted to crawl under the car seat, yet I could tell we were headed in the direction of the hospital.
“Why isn’t he just taking me home?” I said.
“I could honestly use a nice, long beauty bath, freshen up this smelly body and catch up on some good sleep”, as I imagined how I would then wake up to his re-evaluated position upon my long absence and reaffirm his undying love, as always, thoughtfully and stylishly in a quiet, posh restaurant reserved for only this.
Sombre mood
The mood in the car was sombre. He didn’t speak a word, but I didn’t have anything to say either. I walked into the lobby and through corridors of the hospital and up the elevators onto the tenth floor like a zombie. She lay there with machines all around her.
There was this big tube in particular, almost the diameter of a garden hose, filling up her mouth. Her lungs puffed up and collapsed unnaturally, like a balloon being inflated and deflated on purpose. I didn’t process this immediately though there were some unusual number of people, even those I normally wouldn’t see come to visit, all around and everywhere, having whispered conversations.
From a distance, mum seemed alive. Asleep. She wasn’t in the ward where I’d left her though, those many days ago. This unit seemed strewn with a great deal of machinery. No one spoke to me, nor offered a chat, so I walked singly towards mum.
“Hmmm…funny.” I thought it was my hangover.
She was no more. No wonder Saraswati had come to fetch me in a huff.
“She was actually calling for you.” I turned. It was my younger sister Karuna, as if she’d been teleported suddenly to my fast ejecting illusion. I remembered the second or third day after mum’s admission to hospital, Saraswati visiting her. She really liked Saraswati, from the minute she’d met him on our first visit upcountry during my brother Kim’s funeral. Mum knew I wasn’t in love with him, but she took to him in splitting speed. She would rant on and on about how he was the best man for me and I’d always ask her if she saw what I saw and she’d tell me I was too shallow.
Saraswati had come home from the hospital visit wearing a rather sinister grin, raving how mum had playfully insinuated to him that he could have Karuna “if Aida isn’t interested.”
Apparently he had started entertaining that idea more than he cared to admit but it wasn’t surprising at all to me. I’d seen the special treatment he used to give her, including but not limited to wads of cash, so called pocket money, since she’d started living with us a few months before shit hit my fan.
His ogles and signals weren’t that hard to decode when she was around. I guess mum’s suggestion unleashed his dragon, as if to confirm what he’d already ‘heard’ from God. In consequent visits, mum lost her inhibitions as she gushed and rollicked off the topic of selling Karuna to Saraswati. I think she’d secretly harboured this intention for a long time.
I stared at her body not realising that she wasn’t actually breathing. She was on a life support machine. As she succumbed to years of chronic depression that I had not recognised at the time, I realised I had been inviting death much the same way. In the rare moments I was home over the years, on a break from the city, I would literally talk her down and downplay her perennial unhappiness, beseeching her to stop crying at every possible trigger and “get a grip on yourself.”
“How can you be so miserable, mum?” I would ask her.
“Is life really that bad?”
I was numb as they rolled her casket down to the ground. I wept uncontrollably. There was such finality to that moment. I had missed her final hours as I was wrapped up in myself and my self-serving indulgences! This haunted me for years, and the weight of it dragged me down into a rabbit hole that became plummetless.
I was still pregnant when we buried her. Nobody else knew. What I didn’t know at the time was the tremendous toll that this one event was to have on my life going forward, not to mention that it would expose the recklessness with which I had conducted my life prior and expose it for what it was. A big drama.
A drama that was an entanglement of two men, a pregnancy, a profound death, and a job I had sabotaged myself out of after reaching the peak of mental stress, now turned into depression that I didn’t acknowledge as depression at the time. I just thought I was sad, so I isolated myself from the world. All I’d do was sit in a dark room with curtains drawn, all day and night, drinking and commiserating with my demons.
I did not realise when I was hungry and when I did, my intestines would feel like they were feeding off of each other, as if burning from acid. A small bite of bread and as if by reflex, my ritualistic binge. I didn’t shower. I didn’t meet anyone. My seldom but deeply unnerving endeavours to reach out to friends and former colleagues were met with a coldness which I didn’t comprehend.
Apparently, I had been the talk of the town and everyone knew I had gone crazy, so nobody wanted to associate with me. I couldn’t understand why my own friends had disowned me. This whole situation was new to me and all I could do was curl up and isolate. I did not also realise that this went on for months, more than six months to be precise.
I do remember being kicked out of my house several times, the humble aboard on the outskirts of town that I’d reluctantly moved into after succumbing to the pressure to move out of Saraswati’s house and months after we had laid mum to rest. I was manhandled by the landlord, kicked out, house padlocked and I spent nights sleeping at the security zone of the establishment.
One kind soul who happened to be Sarawati’s best friend, Damaru came to my rescue eventually. He paid my rent and helped me move into a new place, with him, and somehow we ended up in a relationship, which to be honest, I must have zombie walked through. All I remember was his parents and sisters always cautioning and reprimanding him more than I could care to hear about me. It’s still a blur to this day.
Privileged life
From a highly successful and privileged life, I was engulfed by a darkness thereafter and for years, that didn’t find expression. With every root of every unprocessed emotion sinking deeper, the narrative about my mum further camouflaged my pain, creating layers of history upon one story.
“I killed her!”
“If I had been there, she wouldn’t have died!”
“She probably died cursing me!”
I drew the curtains on life. I felt as if I’d died while still alive. Under the weight of it all, the life inside my womb, also succumbed.
Numbness set in after the funeral. I didn’t cry at all. I didn’t know if it’s that I didn’t have tears or I was in shock. This was not America. We didn’t cajole and psychotherapy here. Verbalising and crying were seen as weak. This was Africa. You sucked it up and you dealt with it! Messages of condolence and comfort were very Jesus-ish, very Bible-ish. So barren! So lifeless!
‘She fought the good fight, she finished the race, she kept the faith.’
‘Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.’
Every strand of my being tried to hold on to her but the more I tried the more it became elusive. Small pockets of memories, even simple ones were disappearing. I didn’t understand that instead of processing, I was blocking.
It became my coping mechanism and that extended to the way I dealt with people, situations and challenges alike. I carried an external façade of feistiness but in solitude, I was a fierce loner who spent most of her time indoors, drinking, and smoking, insentiently glued to the screen.
I felt lonely, depleted, and trapped. It was as if everywhere I turned, I attracted a bad omen. A few months in, a work colleague of mine, Sebuleni, a lady who I hardly interacted with who happened to live a few blocks from me started throwing teasing remarks here and there, at every random chance she got.
“You’re such a hermit!” she said, “You should get out of the house sometimes!”
She was the crowd puller kind. Anywhere she was, people got drawn to her. She tried to have me join her and her group of friends who arbitrarily hang out in local pubs most evenings. I had taken on a routine of going home straight from work and stayed indoors all weekend, every weekend.
I did get back to work. Elsewhere.
I had emotionally disconnected from everything and everyone so that it naturally felt as if there was nothing else left for me to do. It had started ever so subtly that I did not realise the monster I had been feeding. I would shut down for weeks—shut out the world, unresponsive to the activities and people around me and with little desire to socialise, engage, or indulge human connection.
Everything felt hostile, impeding. I don’t recall much of where even my family was during these dark days, and if they reached out, I scarcely recall. My juice for life had dried up as had my memories.
Press conferences
Before Sebuleni happened, an old friend called Dada came knocking at the door of my flat. She had noticed I seldom went out. We knew each other at arm’s length when we were both journalists. She worked for a rival TV station.
We met at all sorts of event coverages, press conferences and briefings and randomly during social events. She was now working at a public relations agency. We were living within the same compound, and I used to see her go out, but we never really exchanged anything other than greetings or pep talk. She didn’t know much about my story except that I had been out of circulation for a time and mostly stayed indoors.
Former KTN journalist Aida Muturia.
She asked if I was interested in a job. I hadn’t worked for a day since I resigned from KTN. Actually, I had tried getting back into the media game a few months later despite my decadent lifestyle, but it seemed my reputation had doomed me. A number of media houses turned me down. I did not necessarily apply for jobs organically because I had accumulated a number of contacts over the years, so it was easy to just call and ask if there were openings.
Media houses were a close knit syndicate at the time. Everyone knew everyone. There was nowhere to hide or escape. My credentials were out in the open. But so was my tainted reputation. I had targeted a female honcho of a popular radio station, an editorial director of a reputable newspaper, and a newsroom manager of a broadcast house. They all told me more or less the same thing. I remember the radio station boss, Sophia, asking me what had happened in my previous employment, her intonation coming through as if she already knew something about the incident.
The incident had happened a few weeks after we’d buried mum. There was a thing called compassionate leave, I can’t remember exactly how long it was at the time, but I had exceeded its threshold. I had texted my immediate boss Majimbo to request some extra days to ‘mourn’ and ‘settle’ mum’s affairs.
Don’t even know what that meant, I guess I was just staggering time, plus, there was nothing really incentivising about going back to this job that had incessantly vetoed my promotion. He’d responded that I needed to apply for this ‘officially’, which meant traveling five hours to the city from my village. I simply ignored him. I turned up, perhaps two weeks later.
On my work desk lay a white envelope addressed with my name. I opened it passively. It was a warning letter calling out my unsolicited leave and something about disciplinary action. But that wasn’t the problem. Some particular words jumped off the sheet onto my eyeballs with unimaginable disbelief.
You’re not the first person to lose a relative and you won’t be the last!
“What???” Molten lava spiked through my heart.
“My mum has now become – A Relative???”
I sprang up.
“Where is Majimbo?”, I roared.
Can’t remember exactly who spoke. Or what they said. Faintly, I heard ‘boardroom’. I stormed like a raging bear from the newsroom into the winding corridors of the 20th floor of Nyayo House to the farthest wing where the boardroom was located. I flung open the door. There must’ve been ten or thirteen of them. I detected the Managing Director and somewhere, Thahabu was there as I rolled my blood hungry eyes, scouting my prey. I zoomed in on him and coursed round the boardroom table, screeching sharply to a stop where Majimbo sat. I shoved the letter right on his face, kneading it forcefully!
“That’s what you get for calling my mum A Relative!”, I screamed.
“Fuck you!”, as I marched back where the door was, opened it, then turned sharply.
“I don’t care if you fire me or do whatever the hell you want to do! Rot in hell!” I stamped out, slamming the door shut behind me.
I woke up from my newsroom desk. Must’ve been the chill. It was dark. There was nobody. It was past midnight. My eyelids could hardly unglue from the eyeballs and my eyes felt puffed and parched. I was wiped out from crying. That’s the last thing I remember. I must’ve wept myself to sleep after the debacle.
I knew I’d really, really screwed up as I trembled violently through the corridors to my desk the next morning. I was the spotlight of the cataclysmic event that had never happened in this corporate’s history. Everyone’s eyes were on me. I wanted to die.
I was summoned to the Finance Manager’s Office. Zuri also doubled as the Head of Human Resources. She was the coolest lady I knew in this part of town. Stylish, feisty, smart, suave. And extremely charming. Her skin always glowed astonishingly and her hair a tone of auburn, always funky! She loved her miniskirts and when she glided in the hallways, everybody drooled. I had just committed the ultimate felony but sitting in front of her, I felt some degree of ease. She was like that.
She asked me if I was aware of what I’d done. I said yes. She pep talked me about knowing where I was coming from with what had just happened in my life and the consequent emotional disruption and suggested that there was help available. She handed me a letter proposing I seek psychiatric help for anger management and return to work with a letter certifying that my anger was under control.
Regretted
I went home that day and drafted, on a foolscap, a poignant letter listing a host of issues I had piled up over a period of time – everything except addressing what had just happened – and on the last paragraph, regretted that because of it, “I resign.” And of course, I didn’t see any shrinkage. “How can they equate grieving with going loony???” What a stupid girl I was! Or was it the reckless shell left of me, now completely mangled by bereavement that had pushed me to the ledge, incapacitating my already shredded cognitive faculties and stomping on what was left of my reasoning capacity.
I didn’t pick up a pencil, or personal document or any other paraphernalia I’d accumulated in my seven years on the business desk. And I never went back to that building, not even for my pension – which I received but can’t remember how – or whatever other exit process or formalities that needed to be done.
I left numerous government documents and identification cards, educational certificates, my birth certificate and other things I later realised were crucial to carrying out various other transactional procedures in the country. I applied for each document afresh, as if it were lost – anything but go back to KTN. And just like that, I threw away my journalism career.
“I have been informed that you are not reliable”, Sophia said in our meeting.
After the initial responses, I perceived other attempts to secure a job as futile. Or maybe I gave up. At the same time, I did not wish for the limelight anymore. I was too embarrassed. Too broken. In my quest to find a place that would accept me, I landed a stint at a religious TV station, Family Media and intimated to the proprietor that I did not wish to be on TV and just needed to lay low.
It seemed he had another agenda as I remember the station was on a fundraising drive and the timing of my entry couldn’t have been more impeccable. He threw me right into the heart of the campaign, on the screen, doing the promos! He must’ve thought perhaps sooner or later, I would realise how much I missed being on TV. He saw the opportunity to still use what was left of my influence. Several days later, I resigned.
So when Dada asked me if I was interested in a job, my confidence level was well below great and I just wanted to hide from the world. Reluctantly, I agreed to meet her boss, Lula. She was Australian by origin, living and working in Kenya. Her reaction on seeing me seemed sympathetic, as I was a pale reflection of my former self. I was ill-groomed and somewhat timid. Lula took a chance on me, started me off on a three-week grace period to see if I would catch on and perhaps build myself as an asset for her agency.
Three weeks turned into three months. I buried myself in the job, clocked in first before anyone showed up, and almost always, was the last to leave. I worked long hours and also offered myself up for most of the weekends. Lula pushed me up three notches on the organisational hierarchy within a very short period. I became directly answerable to her and she put me in charge of a small team.
In the fourth month, what I perceived at the time as the opportunity of a lifetime came knocking at my door. Another connection, just like Dada, only this time it was an ex-boyfriend, from my high school and before University days, Thahabu, who was now a big official in the government.
He was formerly the Head of News at my former media house employment and first-hand witness to my undoing after mum’s episode. He sort of had always had my back over the years. I think it was more than that, but I will never know since we lost touch over the years and if we did connect, it was a bit clinical and dispassionate.
The opportunity was with the country’s financial sector regulator, the Central Bank of Kenya, CBK. My immediate mission was to install a communications unit within the organisation which was previously unavailable and manage the reputational aspects of the regulator, which was heavily skewed on the negative side of the media coverage at the time.
The bank and its stakeholders were mostly at loggerheads—and CBK was the bad guy. That Thahabu thought me fit for the role, I’d say, was a huge stamp of approval.
I remember the excitement leading up to stepping into that role and the fear that overcame me when I knew I had to break the news to Lula. I had genuinely grown fond of her and loved working for her. God knows, it was too short to just leave. I remember being so conflicted and questioning whether it was really the right move given I hadn’t gained much experience, let alone nurtured my skill set in this new progression of my career.
This was a huge leap, maybe too soon. At the same time, how could I disappoint Thahabu, who of all the people in the world that he could pick, he picked me? But, the promise of a hefty, need I mention, double paycheck and the perks that came with it quickly settled my mind. What had to be done, had to be done.
Turns out, that was the single biggest career suicide in my history of decision making as far as employments. I recall my time there as my worst professional nightmare. Ever! The first two years were profoundly rewarding. I had immense support from the top management, so setting up the communications apparatus was fluid, almost effortless. Everything was allocated, except for funds. What I mean is, any effort or action taken towards building the function was purely a theoretical, un-monetised activity.
Proposals to install a proper operational and human infrastructure were quietly dismissed or stalled, with promises to expand ‘later’. It wasn’t the governor. No. He was deeply appreciative and supportive of my work. He listened to me attentively.
He penned generous and approving notes all over my proposals and any other documents that required ‘my’ office’s advice, comments or feedback. He almost loved me like a daughter, our relationship felt like that.
I passionately loved working under him and even charmed the media into falling in love with him – at least for a time – even the hard critics, two senior editors of whom scored a handful of prime exclusives, such as the first and probably only time – to my knowledge – a journalist was accorded ground breaking access to the enormous total surface area sized complex and highly securitised old oak stenched underground strong rooms, witnessing a money museum in its full glory. This governor’s boldness and involvement was intense and unmistakable.
He shattered the ivory tower and demolished the red-tape fabric of a long held and kept secret culture and supplemented a softer human faced approach and because of it, I made a whole lot of enemies, the ones who mattered anyway.
It was a preserve of the ageing and archaic, a stone-cold public service turf where more than half of its staff were fifty and above with those my age bracket and below at the time accounting for less than 14 per cent.
Basically, I became a lone, one-woman show! Any traction in terms of building the function was equivalent to trotting on a treadmill. The third year and thenceforth turned into a devastating debacle that was to induce a monumental melt down, one to this day I wonder how I recovered from.
I was easily at the lowest point of my life. And I thought mum’s death was the lowest. I wasn’t prepared for the surprises that were coming and the slide back into the rabbit hole of depression. It would later lead me to discover a path I had brushed with but inadvertently failed to discern. Life had packaged despair in a way that would bring me face to face with myself.
Ms Aida Muturia trying her hand — and heart — in Buddhism at a temple in Kashi, Varanasi, India, in February this year.
The aftermath of an overthrow of the governor of the regulatory authority at the time led to the abrupt shutting down of my communications function by the acting governor appointed to step in during the transitory period preceding a new head.
She authorised the deferment of my confirmation as a permanent employee of the bank and covertly cast me into a mishmash of isolation, harassment and abrupt transfers that deflated my spirit, maimed my confidence, and thwarted my potential for other progressive roles.
My competitive edge had gradually blunted, given the duration of time I stayed without an active role and therefore the narrowing of bargaining leverage for other professional engagements. It was what I’d heard be labelled, career suicide.
The tap of alcohol flowed ceaselessly. I became an employee by day, alcoholic by night. And as the law of cause and effect would have it, I attracted more of the same.
Enter Sebuleni and her company of ‘friends’, who were on their own miserable, perilous paths, who came dressed as my fairy guardians and angels, drank and partied with me from Sunday to Sunday! I, of the tag of the prestigious Central Bank, of the wallet bleeding liquidity, who entertained freely, swiped the credit card, threw house parties, heavily borrowed to keep the party going, backslid into a torrent of binging, hangovers, and blackouts.
I was basically buying a company for money. The monster fed my void so well I couldn’t have imagined the snowball that would eventually have me end up by myself, again. An unsparing climax.
The last five years I was posted to the Kenya School of Monetary Studies, KSMS, which bore the notorious reputation as the den of rejects. Most who’d fallen out with outgoing regimes were dumped here. The whole bank was like that, depending on which arm of the political octopus you wagged.
But favour soon fell on me, albeit briefly, with the then Executive Director who elevated my position to a quotient of what it used to be in terms of my skill set and now I had an iota of influence in the runnings of the School’s not-so-official communication function. I earned a few premium perks such as international trips to South Africa and the Netherlands and also scored a seat at the management table.
Theirs were at times cosy out of towners at exclusive resorts plus choice training and I also notched up prime responsibilities at some aspects of the Banks backbone events. But my fairytale tale comeback soon disintegrated as I fell out with him on grounds I have never understood, to date, despite an authentic – I think – attempt at unearthing the reason. It wasn’t surprising anyway.
The gossip mill in this institution was legendary. I really liked him as a boss though. He was super smart, funny and scary at the same time. He made staff freak out whenever he walked past. But when you were in his inner circles, then you got to see his easy going, deeply enchanting persona and amazing heart-deep laughter, not to mention a dazzling sense of humour. The School had never come under such authentic and visionary leadership in my opinion.
I had the best of jobs, an endeared and admired broadcast journalism and communications career, yet it all seemed—jinxed. Everything was disintegrating.
I resigned from the Central Bank nine years later, subsequently assuming the position of an Executive Assistant to the CEO at an experiential events agency called Trueblaq where I took an almost 40 per cent salary cut. I had met the CEO – may he continue to rest in peace – almost a year prior through a residential event I’d organized for CBK in a coastal resort where he delivered some training and we’d kept communication since.
What he didn’t remember is that I knew him from childhood. We shared the same neighbourhood when we were kids. He was one of those cool guys who had an incredible worship worthy kind of magnetic presence and the kids in the hood would always flock around him. That quality had magnified exponentially when I met him many years later.
Trueblaq was his company. It was struggling a lot at the time – cash flow issues and all, but I had no idea. We met at a popular filling station around the area I lived and he mentioned that he urgently needed an EA and if it’d interest me.
I was sold on the spot as I had reached saturation level with the Bank. So all other considerations, including commensurate emoluments to what I could offer and what I was previously earning were off the table. I just wanted out, at whatever cost! I might as well have been cleaning floors! I had this quirky idea that it was a temporary situation, that I would mark time there until something else came.
Trueblaq was in and out of financial difficulties and salaries were faltering. I was struggling to be there. The CEO had been unwell for some time, in and out of hospital and his sister, the General Manager was holding fort as best as she could, as far as I can assume. At some point, I fell out with him based on, well, rightfully, performance issues and was given a chance to resign. It was one of those implicit situations.
He didn’t fire me but his body language already had. The atmosphere was thick with the intonations. It had been long coming anyway and I was grossly unhappy. I was fed up with the entire employment-scape as I had been there almost 16 years. I then ventured, on my own, into the space of network marketing, initially, with quite the flamboyant travel club based in the US Dreamtrips. It was great for a while, especially the travel, but I was sinking in 80 per cent in expenses and only making 30 per cent or less. I ended up using a chunk of my savings to sustain the business and ultimately sold my car and a few other assets to keep up with my rents, bills, and lifestyle in general.
Any semblance of income generating activity from hence seemed untenable. One such, as if it could even deserve a designation was a jumbo-sized scandal of a pyramid scheme that stretched for a year with little, if any, authenticity from my inceptive research, going by the brand, D9, and originating from and involving a Brazilian scammer, Danilo Santana.
I knew, we all knew, intuitively that it was a time bomb, but everyone was minting money out of it. I looked the other way for a while but hadn’t been doing well financially for some time, so I gave in for whatever it was worth.
The scheme started vacillating and collapsed at the same exact time I had deluded myself into believing that it was leaning towards success. Talk about stupidity and greed in one blow! I suffered a financial loss of thousands of dollars, mine and other people’s hard earned incomes and savings, in what seemed like the bat of an eye. Anything I had invested in using the proceeds of that scam shifted like pudding. I grabbed it but I couldn’t grasp it.
In a matter of six months, I was seriously broke. I doused down another gulp of suicide.
“How did I get here?”
As my entire life and savings went down the drain, and strangers and people I knew, alike, bombarded my cell phone with calls demanding their money, threats included, I felt pressed down by the multitude of issues and frustrations and concerns that felt like they were bigger than my capacity to handle them.
Former president Daniel arap Moi (right) and Aida Muturia.
I remember, for the first time in my life, contemplating suicide. Not just as a fleeting thought. I Googled obsessively about the quickest way to die. The dying kicks before I’d finally left the home that we’d shared with Saraswati, I had turned into some sort of dark, attention seeking, extortionist vixen. In my desperation not to be kicked out, I’d started locking myself in the bathroom for hours on end, seated in the empty bathtub, drinking cheap booze and arbitrarily slashing my wrists.
At first I’d thought I wanted to kill myself but even the anaesthetic effect of the alcohol wasn’t enough to propel me to cut deep into the veins. I’d settled for the thrill of the pain of injuring myself continuously, again and again, with a kitchen knife. I would never allow it to heal. But – nobody paid attention. Not even empathy. Nobody raised the alarm or sought help. Nothing.
This one was the real deal. I wanted to die. But I didn’t want pain. No knives, no ropes, or polythene bags! Just a painless end to my misery, please! I gave my house helper as well as the security guards at the apartment entrance strict instructions not to allow anyone into my home.
Then I locked myself in my bedroom, drew the curtains and burrowed there almost permanently. It was self-contained, but I hardly showered unless I couldn’t stand my own stench.
My good old’ stress buster, Johny Walker or whoever was available at the right price, was welcome here as I frantically skimmed through my death options day and night. My phone was off by now, indefinitely. No more interruptions. No more world. Just me at my almost end!
As I pondered the end of my dramatic, waste-of-space existence, oddly I counter-intellectualised my encumbrances of tragedies and the heavy mental and emotional toll they had had on my life.
I reflected on the judgments that had brought me here, the choices that made me feel like I had been obliterated from the game of life by a tsunami and crushed by a deprivation of peace and happiness, my altogether demolition of faith and enjoyment of life.
I had become so fat – weighing in at some 111 kilos. I could not see my big toe standing. It was the alcohol and the pizzas and the barbecued pork ribs and roasted meat – and lots of French fries. Eating was a counter-coping mechanism.
My whole life was a constitution of the perfect storm.
Silently, I wondered what the meaning of life was, why I had suffered so much and if this was all there was to it.
“And who was I?”
I would click into YouTube and search similar phrases:
What is the meaning of life?
Is this all there is to it?
Why the hell am I here?
As one search opened, more of the same came. It was as if the moment I asked these questions, something like a light within me started flickering. And so the likes of Michael Singer, Abraham Hicks,
Eckhart Tolle and Gary Zukav – Michael Bernard Beckwith, Joe Disoenza and Oprah Winfrey–would pop up. My personal favourites were Dr. Wayne Dyer and Mooji.
Other times I would find myself in Praise and Worship fever. I had been a Pentecostal Christian most of my life, and if you weren’t in a church that was shouting and dancing to worship sounds that were swallowed in the clangor of the acoustics, speaking in tongues and preacher trotting from pew to pew, overcome by the Holy Ghost, then that wasn’t Pentecostal enough! So I devoured the messages of the preachers preaching and weeping.
I bawled along, with my whiskey inspired emotions. I had so much pain and I didn’t know what to do with it! It was around this time that I first encountered the terms “enlightenment,” “awareness,” “consciousness,” and “awakening.” I didn’t have a clue what they meant, but they sounded like something I needed!
I felt as if something within me knew this. But what? This was some time in 2017. The decades flashed backwards and forwards as I holed up, immobile. My default mode had become fear, anxiety, and depression. I didn’t know what it felt like to just be. Be happy, be joyful, be anything close to that state.
I was always sad, always solitary, and always suffering the affliction of loneliness. I was haunted by multiple traumas, including the loss of my mum, less than thrilling multiple relationships with senseless promiscuities in between, a couple of miscarriages along the way, and the disintegration of my dream career. I was alive-but-not living.
And it was so deeply rooted that I used to feel, just like my mother, that I would die at an early age. This incredible woman, beautiful, smart and successful in her own right, died at 52, chronically depressed, morbidly obese, and sick with lifestyle diseases brought on by an unresolved and complicated family dynamic and a long-broken marriage. And I believed it to be my fault!
Started smoking
Worse still, I was inexorably heading to a similar demise. As I further evaluated my life, I realised that I had started smoking when I was 18 or so, but when I reached my early 30’s and for a decade, I was smoking 20 cigarettes a day. If I drank alcohol, and that was 80 per cent of the time, that number would definitely escalate to more than 20. I was a heavy drinker.
A 750ml or one-litre bottle of Johnny Walker whiskey was child’s play. Two days, tops! Or one, depending on the sorrows of the day, fuelling the buzz to escape from my troubles and black out for the maximum hours humanly possible not to have to deal with life.
In more ways than I can count, that decade was a blot. I would seldom be up to see my son go to school nor would I be “present” enough to have a meaningful sober relationship with him because I was either asleep, drunk, or stuck on a destructive cycle.
Basically, he was being raised by his long-time nanny and my house help. Sometimes when I drank, I felt so terrible because I couldn’t stop myself, so I cried so much that my son would go to the bathroom, tear out a tissue and gently wipe my eyes. “Don’t cry mum,” he would softly whisper, “Everything will be fine. Stay positive!” He was just 7, regurgitating my very words when sober, those moments I would swear I would never touch a drink again. Until I did.
Three days! World record!
When I was recovering from abusing my body with alcohol, I would be so sick and feverish, having night sweats, my sheets would be all wet and had to be laundered almost daily.
I suffered perpetual low grade fevers because of the volume of alcohol in my system! Increasingly over the years, I quietly prayed for someone or something to rescue me that some sort of miracle would happen.
In 2017, as I got sick and tired of everything that was my life and had even started entertaining the thought of ending it, I was also somehow coming face to face with myself, not sure if it was a moment of truth or a turning point! But both happened at the same instant.
So as I came across these videos with enlightened teachers and masters, frantic fanaticism took centre stage. How do I find happiness? Life felt so…useless! So restricted, defined and determined Why be born, live, then die? All the highs, lows, great and very not so good…yet, here I was, still alive. I saw the cycles and patterns that were my life playing, repeating. Déjà vu…I’ve seen this before!
Former KTN journalist Aida Muturia.
Along the way, other teachings dangled on my face…“Find your purpose in life”, and for a few moments, which in time-space could mean eternity, it felt as if I found a reason to live. Because now, I was looking for something very important, my purpose. I cornered myself, again, truly, truly losing my mind, notwithstanding I had hit a few roadblocks along the way and nothing seemed to be filling the void.
In my feel-good-factor scavenging process, this video popped up one day with three enlightened masters. Two of them I was already familiar with by now, the third was this bearded fellow, looked quite weird but his aura was unmistakable. He was Sadhguru, and the video was titled, “No More Fear.” The first line this man said was, “Fear, is simply because, you’re not living with life, you’re living in your own mind”.
I froze.
He knew.
My pain, my suffering, and every detail of every experience I had gone through. He was raw, unapologetic, but relatable. I binged on his videos for hours. Even in my stupors, I couldn’t stop. I wasn’t sure what I was onto. I just found a place of solace. I was now a drunk who forgot to die. In one of the social platforms, an ad popped up, Inner Engineering, by Isha Foundation, in Nairobi. And alas, there was Sadhguru’s picture. I didn’t connect it immediately, that he wasn’t in Nairobi. I thought he was.
Sobbing profusely
I was sobbing profusely at the coincidence that he had found me, finally. I thought I would forever watch him only in the videos and he was not real, just like the others. They were all overseas and all they did was talk, motivate, inspire, and feed me with fleeting utopia, and I wanted to feel good all the time, so I couldn’t stop because if I did, I would surely die. I signed up immediately for the Inner Engineering 7-day programme.
I was the first to arrive in the class on the first day. I was desperate. By the 4th day, I started having a feeling of home. Kind of like, whatever I was looking for, had found me. Somehow, but I didn’t know how. Life as I knew it, would never be the same.
Through Inner Engineering, I learned a practice called Shambavi Mahamudra Kriya, a powerful 21-minute practice that directly impacted on the level of one’s energies. I didn’t take to it effortlessly at first because my alcohol and cigarette compulsions were interfering.
I just know, when I did it, I felt peaceful. And I wanted more. It was intoxicating, but of the blissful kind, so much so that I expected magic to happen. An instant download of happiness. Like everyone else who can understand that does
But it didn’t. Apparently there was much to learn and experience. That’s how the Guru designed it. But noooo. Pleeeeease!
When my mind cooperated, I would experience some degree of stillness.
This was supposed to be my magic wand. Yes, I know everything that happened to me didn’t happen in a day, but no, I didn’t harbour the patience to wait for it not to go in a day. I wanted the insta-permanent eradication of all the ills of my life.
I put my hands on the wall, kicking my legs and climbing, it didn’t matter what I was grabbing and pulling. The baggage was heavy, the world on my shoulders, but I grabbed and pulled up, buffering through the resistance. I would learn slowly to evolve and grow— gradually, rather than in a day, to be able to take the impact of the changes that had begun taking place in a way that my mind, emotions, and energies could handle.
The practice was designed in such a way that I didn’t have to wish away or control my negative thoughts or switch off my mind. The intent was to create a distance with it, a separation if you may, so that instead of my mind working against me, it would afford me a reprieve. When my mind cooperated, I would experience some degree of stillness.
Eventually the moments became lengthier and I started gaining the awareness that I am not my mind. I can’t say it is something to be understood, intellectually. As close as words can explain, it is an experience. A beautiful experience! I continued the Shambhavi Mahamudra, amidst a myriad of self-inflicted interruptions. I knew intuitively that it was my way out.
Eventually I dropped the expectations of what I wanted to happen. Resistance was there, but I stayed with it, no longer looking for outcomes. Whatever would happen, I let it happen.
Human beings suffer
Sadhguru taught me that the two greatest things we human beings suffer, the two fundamental faculties which set us apart from every other creature – were our vivid memory and fantastic imagination. In other words, things that had happened in the past, and things that had not yet happened. He summarised my entire existence.
Knowing this by theory was one thing, understanding it was experiential. Without a doubt, I saw it and felt it more and more with the practice of meditation. It felt like a shedding of sorts, of what in Yoga they call karma, or accumulation of past experiences. Or memory.
Eventually, I travelled to the Isha Yoga Centre in 2019, a remarkable and contemporary sanctum founded by Sadhguru in 1992 in Coimbatore, India. I attended a profound 7-month transformational program called Sadhanapada, where I volunteered in several of what I term back-breaking activities, which at first I thought were torture, only to appreciate immensely the amazing transformation that they would eventually produce both externally, physically, and within. The program included prolific and potent yogic practices of great antiquity, designed to improve health, wellness, and complete inner wellbeing.
The universe had orchestrated my journey to that of a Seeker. Seeker, the way I see it—and by no means confined to—a person wanting to expand beyond the physical limitations of the human experience. A person who feels that this, as it is, feels too limited. So, the question or questions seemed to lead me to the space of seeking and then I began getting glimpses into that expanse without really landing on any sensible answers.
Not in words anyway. Not in words or anything I understood intellectually anyway. What did it feel like? Something within me starting to find expression. My whole perception of life till now had been limited to five sense organs – seeing, smelling, hearing, tasting and touching – which could perceive only what was physical.
And that’s how I found myself here, and that’s how my spiritual evolution started. Eventually, I advanced to deeper sharing, practices, and meditations from enlightenment teachers and masters like Sadhguru, and as you would expect, an un-layering of the next versions of myself which have come with ease and turbulence alike, but with an awareness that every experience, and usually they come dressed as despondency, was needed to catapult me into the highest, truest version of myself.
Each, another chance at awakening.
Since I discovered meditation, I now use it to enhance myself, as a life. I feel more stable mentally and emotionally. My energies are vibrant and I find that clarity comes easily when faced with the big questions or decisions of life, personal or otherwise.
It’s now easier to accept the situations and circumstances, as they come, as inevitable moments rather than pushing against them, using all my energy, wanting them to be what they’re not—knowing that—if life does anything, it consistently, consistently changes.
Today I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, I dropped meat and have lost, in total, 20 kilos
This has allowed me to cope better with life and be present to the moments without worrying myself silly about the future, which no one knows anyway. I have also learned that suffering is not by design. Creation didn’t intend it that way. We can change our lives, but only if we want to and are willing to do the work. Sometimes it’s also timing, and sometimes it’s the universe aligning with us to be ready.
Whichever way, the signs always come, and somehow, we know, though it’s also possible to ignore. But even when we do, life keeps throwing the same things at us, sometimes soothingly, but other times it comes as a sledgehammer. This is how kind life is to us. It won’t stop until we heed the call. Unfortunately, sometimes it’s also too late.
Today I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, I dropped meat and have lost, in total, 20 kilos. The umbilical cord that tied me to traumas of the past has gradually ruptured. My emotions have become sweeter. I smile for no reason and my mind is no longer my enemy. I have since stopped asking, who am I? I just focus on shedding off who I’m not, which I see as my compulsions and limitations, moment to moment, in the aspiration to be more and more of who I am. That’s pretty much it. It’s a striving, but there’s really nowhere to go.
Sadhguru says that it’s not even a journey. You only have to turn inward. That you have known it all along. I know it’s not something I can understand intellectually by thinking about it. I guess it’s just a readiness to hear it and to, if only, obscurely, sense its truth.
I guess it makes this whole journey about remembering.
That! BY DAILY NATION