Latest / My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story / My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 52: Diwali

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My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 52: Diwali · My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story

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You have never seen this exact evening before,
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and you never will again. Look at it. You're
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doing the looking thing, Selenie said, not turning,
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the festival gold on her face. I can always tell.
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You go still in a particular way. I am... My
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Playful Wife. Episode 52. Diwali. Written by
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Mia. On the evening of Diwali, Saloni knelt on
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the balcony with a row of small clay dias and
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a girl who had never lit them properly and taught
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Tara the order of the lights the way her own
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mother had taught her, and I stood at the door
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and watched a thing get handed down that has
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nothing to do with cloth and everything to do
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with the same instinct. I have noticed that the
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deepest things a family owns are almost never
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the things it could name if you asked. Ask anyone
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what their family gave them and they will tell
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you about the house, the schooling, the money
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or the lack of it, the large visible inheritances.
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They will not think to mention the order of the
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dias, or the particular way their mother folded
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a thing, or the exact words a grandfather used
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before a meal, the small handed down liturgies
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that are passed without ceremony and received
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without noticing, and that turn out, in the end,
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to be most of what a family actually is. The
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big inheritances get spent. It is the small wordless
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ones, the order of the lights, the shape of a
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gesture, that survive, carried in the hands below
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memory and handed on the same way by people who
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could not tell you they are doing it. I had not
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expected Tara to be there, but she had nowhere
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particular to be. Her own family far off, the
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apprentice's customary loneliness of the young
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who have left home to chase a craft, And Saloni
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had said, in the offhand way, she says the things
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she means most. Come to us for Diwali then. You
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can't sit in a rented room while the whole city
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lights up. And so the apprentice came to her
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teacher's house for the festival. The way apprentices
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have come to their master's houses for festivals
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down all the centuries of crafts and the workshop
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family and the actual family quietly became,
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for an evening, the same thing. There is an old
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arrangement in this, older than any of us, that
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the festivals know about even when we have forgotten
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it, that the people who teach you a craft become,
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by the teaching, a kind of family, and that the
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line between the household you are born into
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and the one you are made into by being taught
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is far thinner than the modern world pretends.
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For most of history, the apprentice lived in
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the master's house, ate at the master's table,
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lit the master's festival lamps. The craft and
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the kinship were never separate things. We have
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split them apart in our time into employment
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and family, the workshop and the home. But the
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festival, pulling Tara to our table, quietly
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put them back together for an evening and reminded
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me that the splitting was always the artificial
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thing and the joining the natural one. She taught
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her the order. That was the thing I watched from
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the doorway, and it undid me a little the way
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the small handed down things do. Because there
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is an order to the Diaz, in Saloni's family,
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which one is lit first, and from what, and in
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what direction you move along the railing, and
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which corners must never be left dark, and the
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small particular rules that are not in any book,
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and that every family keeps slightly differently.
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The private liturgy of light that a mother gives
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a daughter on a balcony when the daughter is
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small and the city is going gold. Saloni's mother
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gave it to Saloni. And now Saloni, kneeling on
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our balcony with the city lighting up below,
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and the first dia cupped in her hands, gave it
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to Tara. This one first. Always. Because it lights
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all the others. You carry the flame from this
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one to that one. Never light them separately.
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They have to be lit from each other, or it doesn't
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count. You move this way along the rail, toward
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the dark corner, never away from it, because
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the point is to push the dark back, not to chase
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the light you already have. The girl listened
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the way she had learned to listen to cloth, with
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her whole attention, her quick hands going slow
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and careful, and one by one the dias came alight
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along our railing. each one lit from the one
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before it and i stood in the doorway and watched
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my wife hand a young woman a flame that had been
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handed to her that had been handed to her mother
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back and back along a line of women lighting
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lamps on balconies that i could not see the end
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of i found myself thinking watching it of how
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strange and lucky it is that anything survives
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at all that across all the centuries of forgetting,
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of houses burned and families scattered, and
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whole ways of life erased, some small bright
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practice, like the order of the dias, can still
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be carried, intact, from a dead woman's hands
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through her living daughters into a young apprentice's,
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unbroken. The actual gesture preserved more faithfully
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than any document could preserve it. We think
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of the past as the thing that is lost. But some
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of it is not lost. Some of it is here, in the
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hands, doing exactly what it did 200 years ago
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on a balcony no one remembers, and will go on
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doing 200 years from now in hands not yet born.
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The Dia does not know it is old. It only knows
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it must be lit from the one before. And I understood,
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watching it, that Saloni teaches everything the
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same way, and that the way is the whole of who
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she is. She teaches the bias cut, and she teaches
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the order of the dias, and she taught me, across
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two years, how to stay awake in my own life.
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And it is all, underneath, the identical act,
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the patient handing on, by hand, an order of
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a true thing she received from someone who received
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it from someone else. She does not teach by explaining.
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She teaches by doing the thing beside you and
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letting you watch and then letting you try and
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fail and try again the way her mother taught
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her the dias and the way she taught Tara the
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cloth and the way she has, I see now, been teaching
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me my own marriage. The dia and the dress and
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the awakened husband are all the same handing
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down. And the festival made it visible in a way
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the workshop never quite could, because here
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was the literal thing. The actual flame, carried
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by hand from one small light to the next, never
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lit separately, never allowed to burn alone.
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Here was the candle -to -candle truth of the
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whole of teaching, made into a row of clay lamps
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along a railing, each one alive only because
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the one before it troubled to give it fire. I
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have come to think this is the quiet refutation
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of the loneliest idea of our age, the idea that
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we are each self -made, each the sole author
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of ourselves, each a single light that generated
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its own flame. No one generates their own flame.
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Every light any of us carries was lit from someone
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else's, the craft from a master, the faith from
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a parent, the very capacity to love from whoever
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first loved us well enough to teach us how. We
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are all lit things, every one of us, and the
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fantasy of the self -made man is exactly that,
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a fantasy, a refusal to look back along the line
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and see the hand that cupped the first flame
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into ours. Celonie knows this in her body. It
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is why she teaches the way she does. She is not
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making Terra. She is passing Terra a fire, and
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she remembers every time whose hands passed it
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to her. We lit the rest of the flat together,
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the four of us, Celonie and Tara, and the narrator,
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who is bad at the ritual things and learning,
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and the four -year -old, the inner one, who has
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been with us all along, and who loves the festivals
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the way only a child kept safe enough to love
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them can. And when the flat was full of small
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lights, and the city below us was a vast slow
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field of the same, Saloni came and stood with
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me at the railing, in the festival glow, and
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I had a moment of the discipline I had been practicing
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for two years, the deliberate seeing of the over
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-familiar, because I have stood at this railing
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on this festival a dozen times, lit these same
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lamps, watched this same city go gold. And the
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festival is exactly the kind of recurring thing
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the sleeping self files away as. Known and stops
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attending to. So I made myself look. At the particular
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gold of the dias on her particular face. At the
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city. This city. This Diwali. Never lit before
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and never to be lit again. This exact configuration
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of small flames against this exact dark. At my
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wife in the festival light. Two years from the
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morning she broke open, lit gold along the side
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of her face, watching her apprentice move down
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the railing carrying the flame the way her mother
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once carried it. I looked at it the way you look
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at a thing you have traveled a long way to see,
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and the festival, which had gone slightly invisible
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from familiarity, came back up bright and singular
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and almost unbearably beautiful, the way everything
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does when you trouble to actually look at it.
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This is, I have decided, the entire secret of
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staying married to one person for a long time
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without going to sleep in it. The deliberate
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refusal to let the recurring become the invisible.
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A marriage is built almost entirely of recurring
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things. The same meals, the same festivals, the
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same bed, the same face across the same table
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10 ,000 mornings running. And the recurring is
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exactly what the mind is built to stop seeing.
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The whole art is to keep looking anyway, to insist
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on the singularity of this particular morning
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and this particular face, to refuse the lie of
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the familiar that whispers you have already seen
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this. You have not already seen this. You have
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never seen this exact evening before, and you
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never will again. Look at it. You're doing the
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looking thing, Selene said, not turning, the
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festival gold on her face. I can always tell.
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You go still in a particular way. I am. It's
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worth looking at. You. The lights. The whole
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of it. It is, she said and leaned into me, and
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we stood at the railing in the gold while the
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city burned its small brave lights against the
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longest dark of the year. There was a grief in
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it, too. Quiet, underneath, the way there always
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is in the festivals, and Saloni named it without
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my asking because we name the true things now.
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My mother taught me this on a balcony like this
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one, she said into the gold. I was small. She
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held my hands around the first dia. She's been
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gone eleven years, and I still can't light the
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first one without feeling her hands around mine.
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And tonight I held my hands around Tara's the
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same way, and for a second I couldn't tell whose
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hands were whose, my mother's around mine, mine
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around Tara's, all of it the same hands, really
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the same handing down, going back and going forward
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past both ends of what I can see. She was quiet
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a moment. That's how the dead keep teaching,
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you know? Not in some mystical way. Just, they
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put the order into your hands when you're small,
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and then your hands do it for the rest of your
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life. And when you hand it on, their hands are
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in yours, doing it again through you. My mother
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lit a dia tonight. She's been dead 11 years,
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and she lit one tonight, with my hands into Tara's.
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That's not nothing. That's about the only immortality
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I believe in. The handed down thing. going on
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through the living hands of the people you taught.
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I did not say anything, because there was nothing
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to say that the lit railing was not already saying,
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and because my own eyes had gone hot, standing
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there. Thinking of the line of women lighting
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lamps back past Saloni's mother into a dark I
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could not see the end of, and forward through
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Terra into a dark I would not live to see the
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rest of, and the small flame carried hand to
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hand down the whole length of it, never lit separately,
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never burning alone. There is a particular comfort
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I have found late that I did not have when I
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was younger and more frightened of dying. The
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comfort of being a link rather than an end point.
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When you believe yourself to be the whole story,
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your death is the end of everything, an unbearable
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full stop. But when you understand yourself as
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one dia in a long railing of them, lit from before
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and lighting after, the weight shifts. You are
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not the story, only a carrier of it. The flame
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was burning long before you and will burn long
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after. And your one job, the only one, is to
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keep it alive across your short stretch and pass
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it on. That is a load a person can actually carry.
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The end point cannot bear the dark. The link
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can. I wrote it that night. Late. The dias burning
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down on the railing. The festival quieting. The
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fifth notebook open on my knee. that the festival
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was the whole of everything the year had taught
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me, lit up and strung along a railing where I
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could finally see the shape of it. The dias were
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the lineage made literal, each small light alive
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only, because the one before it gave it fire,
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never lit separately, never allowed to burn alone.
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The order Saloni handed Tara was the same thing
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she handed her in the workshop, the same thing
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her mother handed her. the same thing she handed
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me, a true thing, given by hand, in the right
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order from someone who received it. And the awake
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years, I understood, watching the lights, were
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not finally about me at all, or even about the
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marriage. They were about becoming a person who
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could receive a handed -down thing and hand it
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on still -lit, who could take the flame my own
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life had been given and trouble, while my hands
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still worked. to carry it to the next small dark
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lamp before my own light went out. That is all
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any of us are. In the end, the festival said,
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a dia, lit from the one before, briefly burning,
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leaning toward the next dark thing with our small
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flame cupped against the wind, trying to pass
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it on before we go out. The dark is very large
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and very old, and our lights are very small.
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But we light them from each other. And we keep
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the order, and we never let one burn alone. And
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somehow, against all the odds and all the dark,
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the line of small flames goes on, balcony to
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balcony, mother to daughter, master to apprentice,
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the living to the living, down a length of time
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none of us will ever see the end of. I do not
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know, writing this, whether anyone will ever
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read it. Whether these notebooks will be a thing
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my own hands pass on, or whether they will sit
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in a drawer after I am gone, and be thrown out
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by someone who never knew the man who filled
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them, it does not, I find, much matter. The writing
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was never really for the reader. It was for the
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staying awake, the way the dia is not lit to
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be admired, but to push the dark back one lamp's
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width on the night it is lit. If the notebooks
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survive, good. They will be one more handed down
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thing. If they do not, they will still have done
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their work, which was to keep one man awake in
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his own life for the years he was given it. The
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light does its job in the lighting. What happens
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to it afterward is the dark's business, not mine.
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And below it, the working line, the one for the
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front of the notebook, the festival still gold
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at the edges of the dark page. Stay awake to
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the festivals. They are the recurring things,
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and the recurring things are where the sleep
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gets in because you have done them a hundred
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times and the mind files them as known. But the
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festival is never the same festival. This Diwali
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was never lit before and will never be lit again.
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These hands lighting these lamps on this railing
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against this particular dark are singular and
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will not come round twice. Look at them. Light
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the dia as if for the first time, which it is,
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because you are a day older, and the people beside
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you are a day older, and the line of the dead
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and the unborn shifts by one every year. And
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remember, lighting it, that you are a small flame
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lit from the one before and leaning toward the
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one after. that the order matters, that you must
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never light them separately, that the whole of
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it, the entire bright brave business of being
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alive and handing on what you were given, is
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just this, a flame carried by hand, never burning
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alone, down a railing into the dark. I closed
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the notebook, the last of the dias guttered on
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the railing. Saloni was asleep, the festival
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in her. The order of the lights safe now in a
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second pair of hands. Her mother's flame carried
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one balcony further into the future. And I sat
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a while in the dark with the small lights burning
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down. Two years from the morning, everything
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broke open in the kept and lit and handed down
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life. And I thought. I will be lighting these
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lamps with this woman for the rest of my life
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and teaching the looking to whoever comes after,
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and one year I will light my last one without
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knowing it is the last, and the line will go
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on without me, carrying the flame I carried,
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and that is not a sadness. That is the whole
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point. That is what the lights are for. To be
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continued in episode 53, The Fifth Notebook.
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Playful Wife. If this story is staying with you,
19:18
the next episode is already waiting. Subscribe
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so you don't miss it. The complete book is on
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are on my Patreon. Links are in the description.
19:31
I'm Mia. Thank you for listening.