7 days: Merced show

It went so amazingly well. Thank you, everyone who came, and everyone who made it happen.

8 days: Merced show tomorrow

Actually, that's today. It's 1.45am, and in 18 hours, I'll be on stage at the Merced Multicultural Arts Center, well into Act I of Migritude.

What a week it's been. More challenges - technical, creative, production - than I could ever have imagined. I've been up so many learning curves, and down so many swoops into No, this cannot be happening in this moment, that I could try out for the Olympic downhill ski team.

13 days: Migritude on the front page, Oprah on the back

of the Features Section of today's Merced Sun-Star.

Read the full article: A Voice Of History

You'd think I'd have it down by now

Packing.

I've travelled more this year than ever before. By the end of December, I'll have done 6 trips across the Atlantic in the space of 12 months. I've packed for performing tours that spanned 3 different climate zones on 3 different continents.

Yet even packing for a weekend trip turns me into a ball of indecision. I careen between overpackitis and over-optimistic minimalism - 2 tops to get me through 3 weeks.

And packing for Migritude is a whole new dimension. I'm packing and carrying all the saris, screens, other props, we'll use for the set and the show in Merced. Plus for a week's residency and rehearsals.

I tell myself:

Don't make a drama out of this. It's not rocket science. Think through the week, make a list, and get on with it.

It doesn't help. I know I'll end up with 6 pairs of socks - in 80-degree heat. Or leave out a vital element of my costume.

14 days: First day of the New Year

What is is about New Years, of any tradition, that I leap on so eagerly?

Beginnings - even just the ones we create with fictional lines drawn in the fictional concept of time - are shots of energy. Infusions of hope. The words Saal Mubarak are a magic invocation for me. They conjure up childhood New Year's Days, dressing up, driving all over Nairobi to visit friends, giving and receiving sweets. Opening all the doors and windows at midnight, when the New Year begins, to welcome Lakshmi-devi in.

Today, the New Year is a chance to reconnect with all threads that have fed into and spun out of Migritude in the past year. To consider her journey in the year to come.

I'm struggling with exhaustion, compromised immune system, and countdown-to-premiere overwhelm. However, when I sit still, breathe deeply, and allow myself to simply be with things as they are right now, I see the extraordinary creative entity that so many people besides me have brought into being. How rich and funny she is. How heartbreaking and piercing; how strong and in-your-face; how out-there, razor-edged, lovely, uncompromising. How fiercely, seductively glorious, is this child, born of a collaborative community of creative, practical, strategic, material DNAs. I am so proud of her. Of us. So grateful for the brilliance and generosity that dozens of people have poured into her.

To paraphrase e.e. cummings: I carry your migritudes; I carry them in my migritude.

May the Vyaya year, 5107, that begins today, be filled with richness and ever-expanding largeness for us all.

15 days: Happy Diwali!

No fireworks or mithai for me today - it's another working day in the Migritude countdown. I'm not sure if that makes me obsessive, practical, dedicated, or just sad.

I have mixed feelings about Diwali. When I wrote Today I Dismantled My Gods, I was serious about relinquishing all ritual that had been co-opted by Hindutva. I've relaxed a little in the subsequent years. But any Diwali celebration that doesn't specifically ally itself with anti-communalism, isn't explicity progressive in it's politics, makes me queasy.

But for everyone who's celebrating Diwali out there - may it be filled with light and warmth and joy. And may it strengthen your commitment to radical progressive secularist Hinduism, that challenges the forces of fascism and fundamentalism.