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Monthly Story, December 2022

  • 2 min read

Updated: Aug 9, 2023


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Image → Angela Roma

Archetype → Caregiver

Rasa → Śāntam: Peace or tranquility. Presiding deity: Vishnu. Colour: perpetual white.

Śṛṅgāraḥ (शृङ्गारः): Romance, Love, attractiveness. Presiding deity: Vishnu. Colour: light green,

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As Jamila stepped onto the cobblestone floors, a reassuring composure welcomed her. It was her favourite villa at the old Dutch fort. Although a sunny April sat outside, it felt as if she had just weathered a storm. Feeling her phone vibrating again, Jamila held down the power button without looking at the screen. Her former fiancé, his family, and her family drove her crazy—collectively and individually. She just had to shut them out.


Jamila drank in the space hungrily while being checked in. It was a spectacular seventeenth-century hospice building turned into a villa. Although she had covetously dined at its restaurant, and religiously liked every single picture that they posted, Jamila had never stayed here before. In fact, she had never stayed anywhere alone before. Her right leg shuddered, twitching unstoppably under the reception desk. The old hospice walls reassured her that everything will be alright. Surrounded by its wizened beauty—holding the centuries within limestone pores, bearing countless stories of broken minds and bones that healed between these walls—Jamila couldn’t help but trust this place.


As soon as left alone in the room, she turned the bathtub tap on and started to undress. Jamila watched her own body emerge from the clothes. She took herself in the mirror; reflection of the familiar, yet unfamiliar woman in the mirror. She pressed her hand on the arm just to make sure. Yesterday, she was soon to be wedded to someone everyone else thought was good for her. Today, she was someone who sold her engagement ring and rented a room alone at her favourite villa. She pressed her bare feet against the old cobblestone bathroom floor. The high window snuck in a streak of southern sun that fell on her hair making it shine black-bronze. 'You're worth it', a gentle thought permeated from the tranquility of the old place.


Then, with an incredible release, Jamila wept.


As the pain receded, Jamila felt comforted by the old walls surrounding her with their limestone warmth. The water fell into the tub in a gentle dialogue of liquid and metal, as if to reassure her.


Finally emptied, Jamila wiped her face and turned the tap off. She lowered herself into the bathtub and felt the warm water surround her with liquid grace. Jamila realized that her insides had been brewing a storm since the arranged marriage was confirmed last year. And, when it finally broke out in lashing rains and thunder yesterday, she called off the engagement and didn’t return home to her parents after work. She came to the villa instead. Coming dangerously close to getting locked into a default life that wasn’t hers, Jamila understood that without making room for what she really wants, there will never be space for happiness. But, now what? Jamila had no answers.


Everything will be alright, all in due time; the old limestone walls assured her.





The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred.



Reading List, March 2022

  • 3 min read

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Our monthly stories are productions looking to connect people to the magic of stories.

We create supplementary reading lists as a way to give you an insight into the inspirations and thinking behind our monthly stories. These reading lists take you behind the story, revealing the process of its making.

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Rasa → Adbhutam (अद्भुतं): Wonder, amazement. Colour: yellow, Śāntam: Peace or tranquillity. Colour: perpetual white.

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Archetype → Humorist

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We carefully chose the word ‘the humorist’ to describe the personality archetype used to construct Johnny’s character. This is to avoid the biases and connotations associated with the other names of this archetype—like ‘the trickster’, ‘fool’ or ‘clown’. For centuries, even millennia, and in the widest variety of cultural and religious belief systems, humans have told and retold tales of humorists—archetypal figures who are comical, yet serve to break down social constructs. In its shadow, the humorist is irreverent and deceptive; In its wisdom, this archetype crosses boundaries and exposes the folly of human superiority, bringing us to understand the fragility of the status quo. We found this archetype helping a man find redemption in the 1991 film The Fisher King starring Robin Williams and Jeff Bridges; we reencounter the same archetype in its destructive shadow through the iconic pop-villain Joker and in the childish mischief of Don Quixote, Krishna and Bugs Bunny.


One of the most interesting thought-seeds connecting to the wisdom of the humorist archetype comes through the works of Albert Camus and his philosophy of absurdity. In ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’, where he compares our human existence to the story of the Greek king condemned to roll a boulder uphill for eternity as punishment for his attempts to defy death, Camus suggests that life is, in fact, meaningless. He also suggests that finding joy in life’s meaningless struggle is the only way to overcome the absurdity of the situation. As Camus puts it: “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”


Maybe, we are Sisyphus. And maybe, we are shouldering a pointless boulder up a mountain. But what if, meaning is the thing found when going up the mountain laughing?


This reading list contains some of the literature and ideas that helped us answer these questions on life and meaning, as well as links to social and environmental issues hinted at in Johnny’s story.


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