My evening excursions often lead me along the edge of a narrow, steep canyon. Every single time that I stop and gaze out over it, a memory relives itself in my mind with crystal clarity, flooding my senses with smells and cellular sadness, even though my mind has made peace what ‘what happened, my being goes there and brings to light one more wisp of seeing.
As a girl, living in South India, my father’s humanitarian work often meant crossing cultural lines that were not only based on nationality and religion, but also financial and status. The president of a South Indian transportation company, in an attempt to make a political statement and demonstrate a public show of appreciation to my father for the work that was being done in the areas of medicine and education by Americans, orchestrated a hunting expedition in the Palni Hills. Animals have always been passionately embraced members of my family, all kinds, from labrador retrievers to a squirrel with a broken jaw, to pidgeons affected by insecticides, to a pangolin with internal bleeding, to pythons and on and on. A hunting expedition was the most distant experiential option that any of us could imagine. This being said, as moths to a flickering strange flame, we children were intrigued. We imagined that it was an opportunity to see animals in the wild that were rarely seen up close, but that we could hear regularly, such as tigers and jackals and gaur and elephants. It did not occur to us that guns and injury would be involved. Against my mother’s protestations and palpable nervousness around us joining my father, we piled into the jeep next to him.
An hour later we were standing on the edge of a wide canyon. Trackers were scouring the bush on the opposite side, Mr. Perianiakin stood next to my father, two rifles in his arms, and he handed one to my father. My brother and I looked at each other with raised eyebrows. What? Our father glanced at us and looked concerned.
Suddenly there was rushed action from across the gulf. A female deer was flushed down from the jungle across from us into the canyon. Exploding gunshots rang all ‘round. I watched the deer run, terrified, down the hill and she fell. More gunshots. She tried to get up but was shot again and again.
My brother was shaking and walked off alone.
I felt my throat closing up and I couldn’t breathe.
Every single one of the feelings that overcame me on the day me have condensed into one. Sorrow. I stand with this feeling and I hold it closely. All judgement and outrage gone.
The feelings that spring from trauma, are powerful teachers. We learn who we are and why we are here from such teachers.
Thank you, Universe, for giving me the gift of this canyon at this time.