Hi

Friend, 

A thing I love about Sri Lanka is how its shores yield different gradations of blue depending on where you are. I began writing this from somewhere in the south of Sri Lanka where the seas are a clear, healing aquamarine and sunlight lithely dances on the waves. Move deeper south and tints of turquoise green begin seeping into the water. (Sidebar: if you're interested in a Sri Lankan colour palette, here's one by Amalini)

What was supposed to be quality time with my partner, who I hadn’t seen in months, rapidly devolved into a covid cloud as both of us fell violently sick with what we thought was the flu until we tested ourselves. We holed ourselves up, binge-watched OMIB and drank a lot of soup and samahan. I did not know where I ended and where the samahansoup began. In one sense, now that I think of it, we did get the quality time we wanted but perhaps we could've done without the house arrest, piles of snotty tissues and the fever.

I haven’t written here in a while. Prompted by the economic crisis, this year was the year I moved to full time work in communications after a decade of freelancing (thanks, Gota). I have always been writing in-between the crevices of work and life but this year, that space became smaller.

In 2024, I'd like to work towards a more shared creative practice/community. I've been at this alone for so long, I've forgotten that it doesn't have to be this way. In 2024, I hope iA I write more, experiment more. I hope I can shed this grammar of self-flagellation that has lodged itself in my vocabulary and move towards a grammar of gratitude. I hope to be braver with my voice. I hope I keep learning when to be kind, when to be disciplined and when to give myself grace when I need to.

I also wanted to say thank you for reading in the past year. I’m grateful you’re here, grateful to those who read and share and give this newsletter a life beyond your inbox. This newsletter has such an engaged, curious, generous readership. It means a lot and makes things feel so much less lonely. I feel very lucky. Thank you.

Palestine firmly on my mind in the last months. Two accounts with on-ground updates I've been following are Bisan's and Motaz's. Visualizing Palestine has a series of resources and has been doing advocacy work for years. It has fucked me up that we are witnessing a genocide in real time. To see people's social media accounts going silent because they have been killed. Every day I read or see something which shatters me in a new way. One day it is bread and blood mingling on a road side after a strike. The other day it a doctor who realizes it is her daughter that is the injured patient. A press conference in a hospital piled with bodies. Children burying children. Journalists targeted. Maimed bodies jutting out of rubble. 

It has also bought back sharp parallels from Sri Lanka in 2009. The indiscriminate bombing of hospitals and designated 'safe zones'. Eviscerating civilians under the pretext of the use of 'human shields'. The state propaganda playbook. There are many Sri Lankans who are vocal about Palestine but are silent about our state's war crimes and choose to believe the zero civilian casualty propaganda. I understand that 2009 was a very different political zeitgeist from where we are now, with little space for dissent.  But we are 14 years on and there's a growing body of evidence of the brutality of Mullivaikal and yet many choose to still look away. 

We have recovered(ish) now and I was taking stock of the year while isolating and was seized with a desire to write to you so here we are. I hope 2023 has been kind to you. The end of a year can be a melancholy time. 

As the year winds down, I'm holding close the people I love. I'm grateful to be where I am. I have been thinking about the many kindnesses that have softened the edges of this year. I hope that we can continue to reclaim and cultivate joy — what Cole Arthur Riley refers to as "joy with teeth". Riley describes joy with teeth as a joy that is defiant, a joy that is not captive to despair but also doesn't abandon our belief in beauty. I will be sitting with this definition of joy for some time while dreaming of building community, of building a kinder and freer world. 

I'll see you in 2024. Take care. 
Yours, 

Adilah