This April it’s been ten years since I started writing for this column. Its fortnightly rhythm has become a tidal pattern in my life, and I have little to no idea what flotsam and jetsam the next piece will churn up as it sweeps through my head.

I don’t use the phrase just to complete the maritime metaphor. After all, flotsam refers to stuff that gets in the ocean by accident, and jetsam is stuff that’s deliberately thrown overboard to lighten the load. The beauty of writing is you think you’re dealing with jetsam, but weeks later you read the piece and realise how much flotsam got through as well: those accidental bits of sunken ships and their cargo that are more telling than you ever intended.

Being a personal essay, the 250 or so Cuffs I’ve written have become a document of my thirties, beginning in Dubai, moving to Bengaluru, then to California, back to Bengaluru and back again to California. Over the years I’ve heard from some of you (not counting the family and dear friends who are regular readers) which has been wonderful.

I’ve also encountered people who are uncomfortable with the personal essay. After all, isn’t talking about yourself a little, well, self-absorbed? Shouldn’t our concerns be macro, not micro? Politics, policy, power and privilege?

Trace the evolution

These thoughts certainly occured over my ten years of “Cuffing”. You can actually trace the evolution of my self-absorption from denial of it in the early Cuffs, to fearful realisation it exists, to acceptance of it, and, only very recently, to slowly becoming free of it. (Acceptance does that to things.)

But I can’t help being fascinated by livingroom politics — those flotsam-laden power struggles between individuals. Charity might begin at home, but so does almost everything else. Our expectations of the world, how we relate to other people and their ideas, and the concepts we carry with us often follow deep-set grooves worn by the habits set at our family dining tables, right from when we gurgled and cooed from our high chairs.

Our nurture cross-cuts our nature

Sometimes those grooves run with our natural grain, and we’re lucky to be balanced, wholesome individuals. But sometimes our nurture cross-cuts our nature, and if we don’t realise it, we go through life knowing something somewhere is wrong, but never being quite sure what.

There’s only so much you can go deep-diving in the bathtub. If you unpack your experiences (“unpack” is a really trendy word right now in this context), you necessarily have to write about the actions or words of people around you. But what’s interesting is that whenever you pursue a truth about something or someone else, you learn a completely unexpected one about yourself. Even if you hate the writing or the ideas, I know I have one thing going for me, and that’s my constant, often naive, hunt for the truth.

And as I get closer to that truth, I’m reminded of the lines from Joni Mitchell’s song Both Sides Now:

Oh but now old friends they’re acting strange, / They shake their heads, they say I’ve changed

Well something’s lost, but something’s gained / In living every day.

Thank you Gulf News for this space that’s become close friend and teacher. Thank you to the lovely people I know who read every Cuff as it comes out. And thank you to anyone else who is reading, especially the couple of regulars I’ve never met, but have heard about. You’ve stuck by me for a long time. Maybe in another ten years we’ll finally unearth that truth?

Gautam Raja is a freelance journalist based in Los Angeles, USA.