Choosing Intuition Over Cynicism

Swarnali Mukherjee joins Cave of the Heart and answers 5 questions about self-trust

Welcome to Cave of the Heart, an interview series where writers trust-fall into the depths of inner-knowing, creativity, and the craft of writing. Are you ready to get curious about the cultivation of self-trust, give a warm nod to our child selves, and celebrate inspiration in all forms? Come with us into the cave of the heart.

I am a stream-of-consciousness explorer, writer, and designer based out of Kolkata, India. As a descendant of war refugees, I possess a natural tendency to ponder the imminent dangers of oppression. Other subjects that intrigue me include analyzing power structures, and cultural malaises like hustle, consumerism, materialism, and the attention economy. My curiosity is inadvertently fueled partly by my ancestors’ past that lingers in the shadows of my identity and partly by my lived experiences. I exhume these fossilized memories on my Substack, Berkana. I frequently meditate on themes of war, grief, and loss, exploring what it truly means to be human amidst such adversities.

I have been diligently crafting a body of work that awaits transformation into a manuscript. While it remains a work in progress, my aspiration is to bring it to fruition as a complete book soon. It has been massively inspired by Clarissa Pinkola Estés’s work.

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In today’s interview with Swarnali Mukherjee, we’ll explore…

• prioritizing the intuitive voice over the cynical one.

• demanding muses

• how to not judge others when they can’t connect with your truth

• the role of negative emotions

… and so much more. You will love it, I’m sure. Read below:

Describe the setting where you’re answering these questions.

In February of this year, I received a call informing me of the severe prognosis for my father’s ongoing cancer treatment. My husband and I made a swift decision to move across the country to be closer to our parents. Everything was fine for a while, and my father was even recovering well. But on the fateful day of April 8th, my father passed away suddenly and traumatically. This interview was recorded much prior to my loss.

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Swarnali Mukherjee: I am answering these questions from my newly set-up writing desk beside a window overlooking farms and unkempt patches of banana and bamboo forests. India’s eastern countryside is wild, magnificent and unruly. My experience of it is quite sublime, so I often find myself bewildered down to my bones. Throughout the day, it feels like any other city with construction noises pouring in, but as soon as dusk arrives, the entire place is blanketed in an eerie stillness. It is the kind of quiet that permeates through all the mundane edifices. All the gradients in movement seem to merge into a quiet oneness during those hours of prevailing darkness. 

It is in this hour that I am sitting down with these questions because nothing is as instrumental in the unfurling of mind as silence. Oh, and I can hear the jackals howling and yelping through the paddy fields; the crickets are singing in chorus too. I guess it must rain today.

Childhood

Amanda: Given a choice, were you the child who would run barefoot outside or were you inside reading?

Swarna: If it were up to me, I would always be tucked away in a corner, reading by a window, invisible to both grown-ups and children alike. I remember reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe for the first time and creating scenarios in my head of a reclusive uncle somewhere in the highlands who had a secret wardrobe that opened up to a place like Narnia. I even invented imaginary characters and traveled with them for months at a stretch in my fictional world.

I was a quiet child, so nobody bothered to get in my way until one day my sister insisted that I, too, should go outdoors and make some friends. I was old enough to go by myself, so my sister never accompanied me. Besides, I guess my shy, introverted energy crippled her social life and made it hard for her to make new friends.

To make up for her awkward avoidance of me, my sister used to steal books from the school library for me since we did not receive enough allowance to afford the luxury of reading. We were students of a missionary school, so getting caught stealing would have brought dire consequences, but my sister risked everything so that I would feel less lonely in the company of great books.

One day she brought a copy of Alexandre Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo, and I just couldn't put it down for almost a month. Apparently, it is one of the greatest revenge stories ever written in French literature. I read somewhere that, because of his partial Afro-Caribbean ancestry, Dumas used to be bullied and ostracized as a child.

In some sense, then, the story of the illustrious Count of Monte Cristo seemed to be an alter ego of Dumas, who, through similar talent, connections, and strife, rose to a position of power and influence. Dumas and his story left an indelible mark on me, implying the gravity of words and their power to galvanize the universe in your favor. I think it was then that I truly believed that I could do the same with words, if I used them effectively. 

Influences

Amanda: How do you recognize when someone or something is a positive influence on your writing process and self-trust? What changes inside you and on the page?

Swarna: For me, cultivating self-trust means prioritizing the intuitive voice over the cynical one. I reflect often on the Cherokee parable of the two wolves—one symbolizing darkness and despair, the other light and hope—wherein the wolf that prevails is the one I choose to feed. When I meet someone new or read a new way of thinking about the world, I tend to observe which voice they nurture. I find the ones that encourage the intuitive voice also positively influence my writing and self-trust, which in turn also foster a seamless flow of expression. I don’t find these sorts of connections often, but when I do, I notice the change in my creative process.

I work diligently to avoid conformity or being trapped in an echo chamber, which is why I also ask a lot of questions—of the world, of people and of myself. I engage in rigorous self-inquiry. I scrutinize my own biases and convictions, challenging the most entrenched aspects of my perspective. I ask the rigidity in me, “Why are you here, and what are you blocking from my vision?” If I am slipping down the wrong rabbit hole, it’s usually because I’m seeking validation rather than truth.

Creative Spark

Amanda: When you get an idea for a new essay or project, what does your first instinct look, sound or feel like?

Swarna: The new idea is usually not a “spark” or scintillation for me; it feels more subtle, like whispers or nudges here and there. It's like a looming shadow in my subconscious, akin to a spectre passing through wind-blown curtains—barely visible through the corners of my eyes but enough to awaken curiosity. It is a slow awareness that something is awaiting manifestation. To me, the muse is always elusive, mercurial, and proud. It's like a cat, closely observing me; lose focus for even a second and it disappears as if it never existed.

My muse demands attention—complete, dedicated, and persistent attention. Sometimes it nudges me into scribbling notes, verses, sketches, or taking photographs—it seems to want a thread to hold onto the inspiration, in order to harness it later. Sometimes, an idea repeatedly arises synchronously in multiple places. For instance, I might be thinking of nostalgia for colonial architecture, and then throughout the day, get hints of it in various ways—like someone mentioning it, or stumbling into it on YouTube or in a book.

All these signals urge me to chase after a specific idea. The more I delve into it, the more avenues of exploration open up, like discovering endless rabbit holes to dive into. A new idea usually feels like venturing into a strange mind-scape with writing as the only way to truly comprehend the unravelings. It's like riding a wave that builds up until it crashes into an essay or a project. 

Writing Process

Amanda: Were there any habits or beliefs that you had to let go of in order to more deeply trust your writing process?

Swarna: The first thing that I had to let go of is approval or validation from others. I now know what I did not know when I started: that your authentic truth might make some people really uncomfortable, and you have to voice it anyway. Even if you might feel a little queasy about certain things, those are the things that you need to embrace the most. They are the unresolved pieces of yourself that perfectly fit into the places your writing demands. Essentially, you have to write your truth into power.

I’ve learned I can't concern myself too much with impressing or offending anyone who may not want to connect with my truth, either by choice or circumstance. Because I know that I’m writing not to belittle others but to exalt my own truth—and this has helped me tremendously in deeply trusting my writing process.

The second most important thing that I unlearned is reacting to every stimulus around me. Cultivating a nuanced perspective of the mundane requires undeterred commitment to the act of observing without reacting. The structure of the world, as we know it, is designed for reactions—social media and digital presence all nudge us to react fast or risk missing the train of intellectual discourse. What I am essentially suggesting here is quite the opposite.

We need to harness the rising waves of emotions so we can channel them through and into our creative pursuits. In the context of writing, our process then becomes a response to our triggers. In order to understand what we observe, we need to create. Contrary to what the modern world would have us believe, I think our immediate, mindless reactions to our circumstances stifle our creativity.

The third and final thing that I had to unlearn in order to completely fall in place with self-trust, is the idea of “negative emotions.” Every emotion has its purpose — anger exists as a catalyst for the most urgent changes; melancholy fosters within us a profound connection to existence; grief, on the other hand, is the catharsis needed to cleanse our vision, like the atmosphere after the passing of a storm.

This has helped me see that there is nothing wrong with brokenness. The world is a difficult place to be a human, and growing up unintentionally comes at a cost, a price that we all learn to pay as we traverse our individual paths. The ways of the world would break us. Some of us are battered by life circumstances, by people who want to clip our wings, by geopolitics, by our own family, by strangers. 

Our job is to confront these monsters lurking in the shadows, to slip from their tight grasp, and not let them overpower our existence. The only way I’ve found to do that is by fully accepting our collective brokenness, our humanity, to admit that our hearts hurt and we break down more often than not. To hold despair tenderly and say to it, “I am here, and I know you are too, but I want you to know that you will not reign over me.”

Resources

Amanda: What one book, poem, piece of art or chapter of writing would you give to your younger self, and why?

Swarna: This timeless piece of advice by Arundhati Roy because it encapsulates all the wisdom of human existence in one beautiful prose. It resounds deeply with who I was, am and yet to become.

“The only dream worth having is to dream that you will live while you are alive, and die only when you are dead. To love, to be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and vulgar disparity of the life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.”