Radiant Anguish: Conversations at the Cusp

Lata Mani & JS

A transoceanic exchange about life, death, trust and the Divine as it evolved via email, WhatsApp, SMS and audio messages.

Reviews

“Radiant Anguish does two things at once: it invites death and dying, loss and flesh, endings and fallings-apart to the chequered tablecloth for tea - away from the cold outside where we - frozen with fear about discussing mortality - have banished them. And then it sublimates the apparently run-of-the-mill exchanges between dear friends across familiar modern media to the finer realms of sacred doxology. And that is what this tear-inducing book is: a softly whispered hymnal to dying, to the generosity and beauty in fading away. If you read it, you might notice a third gift of this composition: it makes you come alive.” Bayo Akomolafe, Author, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home. 

“In Radiant Anguish Lata Mani has assembled a suite of illuminations extending over the last two years in the life of a close friend, JS. The intertwining of the two voices, using email, texts, and many links, each step of their exchange offering the other succor, prayers, music, poetry, essay, and memoir is a truly beautiful series of documents, a memorial of deep love and friendship. I read the book in one sitting.” Susan Daitch, Author, The Lost Civilization of Suolucidir, L.C., The Colorist, Storytown, Paper Conspiracies

“An unbelievably moving epistolary exchange about the process of dying. A warm and brave feminist friendship shines through these emails and texts. Many of my loved ones have had serious or terminal illnesses, so I know how difficult it is to confront the emotional, spiritual, philosophical and intellectual weight of dying and, by extension, living. I was carried from page to page as insights grew and deepened. Radiant Anguish gifts us words with the power to make us less fearful, less nervous about dying.” Poorva Rajaram, Research Scholar, Center for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University.

A unique immersion in embodied spiritual pedagogy, a contemplative rendition of the dance of creation and destruction, and a courageous meditation on the nature of pain and care, Radiant Anguish: Conversations at the Cusp bears witness to the transformative power of love and friendship in the face of the unknown. As seasons pass and flowers delicately bloom in its pages, the non-narrative rhythms of illness, intimacy, and revelation vibrate within a dialogue that both celebrates and transcends the fragile limits of the physical body. Emails, text messages, poems, songs, prayers, and shared readings echo one another as their energy travels from cell to cell, from coast to coast, surfacing the Oneness of experience in the extraordinary everyday—in the vastness of the Pacific ocean, in the tenderness of an evaporating dewdrop. Ancestral yet contemporary, timeless yet humbly situated in the present, Lata Mani and JS's words form a choral prayer in praise of the infinite conversation between humanness and the divine, anguish and radiance, oblivion and remembrance, life and death. In weaving their voices together at the cusp of language and the senses, the music that emerges from this book harbors the distinct tune of wisdom. Juan Diego Pérez, Doctoral Candidate, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Princeton University.

“Radiant Anguish is an exploration of what it means to die, and through such discovery, what life could mean. J is dying, transitioning from one realm to another. Lata was nearly there before and strangely, returned changed. There is little time. Together they make the most of what is there, between chemo schedules and ordinary business, blessed with divine insight.  They use what they have - WhatsApp texts, phone calls, visits, articles, videos, links to articles and ultimately, language – its presence and absence. Cognitive boundaries disappear and the essence left is an ocean of love, boundless, where the whole remains. This is a genre defying work of deep meaning, where little gems reside in the corners.” Amlanjyoti Goswami, Author, River Wedding.

Preface

Radiant Anguish is an accidental text. It collates my correspondence with my dear friend JS between September 2016 - when I learned that she had been diagnosed with terminal cancer - and her death in March 2018. It traces a mostly transoceanic dialogue about life, illness, death, trust and the Divine, with some of it unfolding in person during my visits to Northern California. JS was embedded in a broader weave of conversation and care that involved many others. Our exchanges were only one strand in a complex discursive web.

I met JS in 1990 in the USA in the lead up to the First Gulf War. We were active in the nationwide mobilization against the impending war. We quickly gravitated towards each other. JS, my partner Ruth Frankenberg and I shared a deep bond despite the infrequency of our meetings. Over the years our paths diverged more than they converged. I suffered a head injury in 1993 and entered the parallel and socially invisible universe of the ill. JS went on to graduate school and grew to become a brilliant, significant scholar. When she and her husband KJ moved to Northern California so she could write her dissertation our paths briefly crossed again. We spent memorable evenings with each other. Over JS’ writing desk hung a huge color poster of Kali, the ink-black Hindu goddess of transformation. Looking back, one could read it as presaging something about the future. 

 A year later JS moved to the East Coast and Ruth and I relocated to India. We were in touch briefly after Ruth died in 2007 but our contact remained intermittent until September 2016 when I wrote to invite her to a screening of my film The Poetics of Fragility. It is here that the story told in these pages begins. Ruth hovered over our conversations throughout this post-diagnosis period - as energy and as memory - which is why she has been introduced here.

A terminal diagnosis reconfigures the pieces of one’s life. As one grapples with a new reality, customary predilections can gradually recede and previous dispositions soften. New questions assert themselves prompting new directions of inquiry, even a new modus vivendi. Since I had written extensively about the process of being remade by illness our conversations naturally tended in the direction of such exploration. 

 Radiant Anguish differs from other accounts of life-threatening illness in two ways. First, it is a set of epistolary exchanges dispersed across digital forms: email, SMS, WhatsApp and voice mail. Our exchanges range from the quotidian business of scheduling meetings, to sharing music and poetry and addressing JS’s concerns about the transition that we have come to call ‘death.’ This slim collection is as much about friendship as about illness; about living as much as it is about dying. 

Second, and perhaps more unusually, Radiant Anguish includes teachings JS received from the Divine Mother.[1]Though addressed to her, the wisdom they contain have the potential to comfort others facing the end of life. The profound impact these teachings had on JS convinced me to accept the inner call to assemble this text. On our last day together, I surprised myself by asking JS if she would be open to our correspondence being made public if I was guided in that direction. Her response was unequivocally affirmative. Her husband has concurred with her decision and it is with his support that I publish this text.

JS’ unmistakable energy, courage, honesty and brilliance shine in these pages. Since some of what is recorded may strain credulity for some who knew her and/or distract from the import of her work we have chosen not to disclose her identity. Here then is our dialogue as it unfolded, lightly copyedited to ensure privacy and readability.

Lata Mani, July 2020

[1] The Divine Mother is the personification of the feminine sacred principle. Her many names include The Great Mother, Devi, Kali, Tara, La Madre, The Virgen of Guadalupe and Yemaya, the Mother of all Orishas in the Yoruba tradition.