This Tuesday I had the concluding session of the month-long writing workshop I was teaching for the second time through the Berlin Art Institute platform. I’d been really enjoying the participants, all insightful, profound people who were interested in accessing their subjectivity. For this last session I had asked them to share their attempts at the final assignment, which is among my favourites—they had to think of an artwork that really moved them, it could be anything they considered to be art—a book, a piece of music, a painting, a sculpture, their grandmother’s embroidery. The chosen artwork assumes the central theme of a fictional gathering they are then to host. I asked them to decide what form this gathering could take, a picnic, a four-course meal, or a moveable feast, it was up to them. 

They had to decide the seating arrangement, if any, for their fictional guest list and arrive at the menu. Each participant is invited to then share what they evolved, as well as the methodology behind their decision-making-process and the menu. I love this assignment because it triggers people’s creativity without causing anxiety. It’s a fun, stress-free way to be a host and plan a gathering that is not constrained either by budgeting issues or by the dictates of space and time. I’ve had all manner of propositions, inter-galactic dinners, walking picnics, one intense feast constructed around a Beethoven symphony! It’s so exciting to glimpse how each participant essays the role of host uniquely, and who they choose to invite to their table. This time, however, one participant came up with the idea of inviting her two daughters and all her significant past selves along with her mother and grandmother. The agenda for the night involved dancing in the moonlight, as the moon was her overarching theme. Because it’s my birthday this Saturday, I wondered what it would look like if I invited my 37 previous selves to a feast? Would they get along? Would they be kind to each other? Would they forgive each other? And most importantly, which one among them would be the host? Which one among them would decide the menu? Would the self that’s turning 37 be the one who does the cooking?

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Because our child slept so well last night, I slipped into dreams, and for some reason I returned to Kurla, to the cusp of the year 1999, when, during the Christmas fête, I was asked to represent our BCC (Basic Christian Unit) in a pageant that was audaciously called Millennium Queen. In my dream I was hurriedly going through my wardrobe for outfits, and panicking about how my milk-laden breasts could no longer fit into my old bikini top. My sister was helping me deal with the situation while I tried to prepare some sort of homecoming speech, to woo the judges into picking me as the Queen. It was silly and strange, but when I woke up I remembered what it felt like to have won, to have been crowned with a cheap tiara and a red sash and to be awarded a set of melamine tableware. It is odd that I chose this moment of triumph to regress into. 

The wonderful thing about the process of healing and reparenting is this joy of re-inhabiting our past, unentangling it from the emotions of shame and guilt. I still think two years of therapy was the best present I could have gifted all my past and future selves. 

Deliberating on the life and times of Everywoman, Rosalyn D’Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She tweets @RosaParx
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