Saheba Singh and ‘All Kinds of Stupid’ – eShe

By Palak Malik

Saheba Singh leads a multidimensional life. On one hand, she is a design entrepreneur heading a Delhi company that offers architectural and interior design for restaurants and stores. On the other, she is one of the few artists in India who creates live kinetic art, coordinated with music. And now she has added another feather in her cap: that of author.

Her new book All Kinds of Stupid (Fingerprint, INR 299) is a book of love, longing, memories, grief and poetry. A book of feelings and about numbness too. A book so real and yet so dreamy. It feels like having a glass of wine on a weekday afternoon. You can drink the poems to fill up the empty spaces in your heart. And, then eat up the questions to mull over in your head.

It will help you deal with your traumas while healing your soul. It takes you on an emotional roller coaster of memories and experiences, and everything in between.

But it is also about having dreams. And, chasing those dreams.

I interviewed Saheba Singh to know more about the book All Kinds of Stupid. In this conversation, she reveals a bit about herself and a lot about her artistic practice. You can watch the entire conversation here or read on for the edited transcript.

I’m going to ask you some of the questions you’ve asked in the book. If you could, what would you be: a star or a shooting star?

I would be a shooting star. It would be fun to see what all people hope for when they see me and wish for.

If you could say one thing you never said, what would it be?

I would say that I forgive myself. That’s something I would not only just tell myself, but try to believe as well. That’s not something I’ve ever done before.

What’s in your heart?

I don’t have a red heart. My heart is black. And I think black is beautiful. I think dark is beautiful. And what’s in my heart? What’s in my heart is very relative to where I am, who I’m with, what I’m doing, what kind of mind space I’m in.

So, what’s in my heart, apart from the people I love and the things that I care about? It depends.

My heart can just be empty sometimes. And sometimes it can be so full of stuff that I feel like it’s going to explode and take my brain down with it. Sometimes it can be something as simple as remembering my dog or watching a show on Netflix or writing something or sketching. It’s extremely relative to where I am physically and mentally. But whatever it is, it’s all in a dark heart. It’s in a black heart.

I love the dark. I think dark is underrated. Black is underrated.

What do you remember from your childhood?

I grew up in a joint family. And we were two brothers and two sisters in the same house. There was absolutely no discrimination between boys and girls. My sister and I weren’t expected to do the usual things that back in the day people would expect girls to do around the house. It was a very progressive upbringing. We were taught early on about the importance of earning your own livelihood.

My fondest memory of my childhood is all four of us, brother, sister, cousin, brother, sister. We used to pile into a really big red car every day and used to go horse riding and swimming. And that was one of my sweetest childhood memories. It was fun.

The book itself seems like a piece of art with poetry, illustrations and inkblots. I really like how you have invited readers to interact with the book – “write on it, sketch on it, let there be rims of wine glass stains on it, and let the ends be folded and turned to mark the ones you like”. It is like you’re inviting the reader to play. Tell us about your own artistic practice in relation to the book.

I hope that the book becomes your go-to space. Use the book to tap into your own feelings, use it to express whatever triggers your head and heart. Use it, scribble on it, write somebody’s name on it, send it to them. So that is my hope for the book.

I believe we should stop taking everything we do so seriously. And, stop taking yourself too seriously. Of course, there are real problems, and you need to address them. But at the end of the day, just do your best and let it go. Stop protecting things and stop putting them in plastic bags, whether that’s your feelings or that’s your most expensive bag. Just use it, wear it, express it, you know, let it go.

So what if you spill a bit of wine on it? So what if you turn the corner? So what if the book gets a little damaged? That’s all right.

You will associate it with a memory when you come back to the book. And for me, that’s always been the most special part about books that I’ve always read. I always highlight and put Post-Its and I always go back to those pages.

The markings take me back to the space I was in when I highlighted that text. And I think by default, that lets you evaluate where you are today. And you see the progress that you’ve made as a person.

Tell us about your process of writing the book.

I’ve been writing these short pieces for years. But it was only recently that I decided that I could consolidate these into a book.

But when I put all these writings together, I just felt that it had no emotional navigation. It was just all over the place. It wasn’t even taking me as a reader to a chartered course. It wasn’t engaging my emotions one at a time, and letting me dwell on it. Like suddenly it was about the weather and then it was about mental health and then it was about something else.

So that’s when I decided to divide the book into five different spaces for it to make sense. And I wanted there to be a takeaway on every page. Because a lot of us are emotionally blocked. And even when you read something and it resonates with you, you still can’t put a finger on what it has exactly resonated with. So that’s where the questions came in at the end of each page – to help the reader with the key takeaway.

I want them to think about who is this reminding you of or what is this reminding you of or what is this making you feel? And I’m hoping people ask themselves that question and I hope it gives them some answers.

Can you tell us more about these spaces you have created in the book and how does that structure help the reader on this journey?

The book is divided into five spaces. The first one is about quintessential love and loss. If you are alive, you are constantly going to love and you’re constantly going to have losses. Whether you’re losing a pet or you’re losing a friend or you’re losing somebody to death. It’s an ongoing process. Nothing is constant. And it’s important to acknowledge that. That, of course, it’s a loop.

So, the second one experiential choices and experiential trauma is about that child in you that never healed. And, if the child in you never healed, chances are neither have you. And we really all have trauma and memories that we don’t acknowledge. And just because we don’t acknowledge them, it does not mean that they’re going to go away. They are going to take some other kind of avatar and they’re going to surface in a completely different way. And it’s going to come out in a way which even you might not recognise.

You acknowledge who you are and your traumas, and you start understanding why you are a certain way, why you react a certain way, why you lose your temper or why you never say anything, why you bottle up your emotions. So the second space is about tapping into those feelings and acknowledging them.

The third one is a space to grieve. Heal, flow and repeat. So grieve for it. Understand it. Stop romanticising it. Stop dwelling over it. Get the help you need. See a therapist, get medicines, do what you love, whatever it takes, you know, heal and then repeat. Because like I said, space one is loving and losing all the time. So if you’re going to be loving and losing all the time, you’re also going to be grieving, healing and repeating. So it’s kind of an ongoing process.

The fourth space is about surviving sunsets and settling storms. It is about finding your own grounding. Explore as much as you want, but just keep like a cord tied very close to the ground all the time. Don’t get influenced by everything that’s around you. You know, be very sure about who you are.

And then you can keep adjusting your frequencies and wavelengths. You can keep tapping into different experiences. But at the end of the day, when you come back home, you need to be really sure about who you are.

And that’s where I feel that being near nature plays a really important part. If you just sit down quietly in an open space, under the sky or if you just sit down quietly, and you connect with nature as is. You look at the sea, look at the stars, look at the moon. If you’re sitting in the car and you see the moon and you just fix your gaze on it for 10 minutes, it will take you to a different zone. And the fourth space is about finding that.

The fifth space says to give your dreams a name or at least give them a chance. It’s easy to get disheartened. You have to pick yourself up every morning. I think what always kept me going is that I always had a pending dream. “Let me try and finish this project. Let me try and finish my book.”

Always have a couple of dreams in your immediate future. It could be as small as, let me try and attend my friend’s birthday this weekend. Or simply, let me try and have a good time this weekend. From really small dreams to the bigger ones, it’s important to always have dreams.

How much of the book is a reflection of you? Is it all of you? Or is it inspired from other people’s narrative as well?

When I was writing it was my narrative, or this was how I felt. But I have come to realise that all of us pretty much have similar narratives. The fact that whoever’s read the book till now, the one common thing that they have all said is that it feels like their own story.

It’s ours. It’s our narrative.

What are the current projects that you’re working on? What is next for you?

I’m designing a phenomenal space, a restaurant in Bombay. And I’m hoping that it turns out to be one of Asia’s best. So that’s what we’re going for. That’s my professional dream at the moment.

Also, I’m really hoping for this book to do well while compiling my next book. Hopefully it should be out in six or eight months, which is going to be a complete departure from All Kinds of Stupid.

And also, my quintessential dream is I want to be okay. I want my mental health to be okay. I want to get well. It’s an uphill task. It’s difficult. But that is my ultimate dream.

I don’t want to battle with the voices in my head and fatigue in my brain anymore.