Nisha Susan: Why showing up is the key to connection and finding your community

For years and years, I have heard the phrase “it takes a village”. I knew former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton had popularised the line when she named her book after the proverb, in the context of raising children. For most of those years that I heard the proverb, I had no children and I lived in a metaphorical village where all my friends knew my business and I knew theirs. When I did have children, the earliest years were a combination of well-paid nannies, covid-induced isolation and a covid-induced move close to my family. During the pandemic, my immediate family and I saw each other more often than we had in my teens. A good indication of how things went in those years was my father remarking, “Your neighbours must be wondering why they can hear people singing Happy Birthday every week.” We celebrated everybody’s birthday and ate every last crumb of every festival. Then alas, we had to leave the temporary village and take off our masks.

When we were newly far from home, everyone assured me, “You will find your village.” And the first principles of that involved asking people for help. People meant it less in the context of childcare and more in the context of “you will find your kind of friends”.

As I was about to find out, I hated asking people for help. And I didn’t want to discuss my children with strangers. I did both. I talked about my kids with people—with the understanding that I might have to someday swallow my pride and ask for help. And when that rare, annoying colleague made snide remarks about my being 5 minutes late two days in a row because of child-related duties, I also surprised myself with an explosive Mount Etna-like performance. Who knew I still had it in me?

Asking people for help and getting it, like I did, can rekindle your sense of optimism, if that sense has recently been feeling less like Etna and more like Mount Fuji. But did it give me the village? Not quite. I was still in search of that old cosy, nosy feeling where everyone was all up in my business and I was up in theirs. And then recently I saw someone say, “if you want a village, you have to be ready to be a villager.” I was so taken by this idea. I had been going about it all wrong!

I had been smiling inanely and trying to be as little trouble as possible and asking for help through gritted teeth. I hadn’t actually been trying to join anything. If anyone asked me for help, I had been ready to turn up. But there were obviously other ways to turn up, other ways to be a villager, other than being braced to save the day.

I gave myself the assignment of going to things I didn’t really need to go to, to see people I didn’t know too well and definitely see people I knew well. This is not easy because most of the people I know have two-and-a-half adults/children/animals they are responsible for and have three-and -a-half jobs to pay the bills.

After giving myself the assignment, I have gone to a talk by the translator of an Italian poet who died young and whose name I can’t remember, had coffee with a much younger, very funny acquaintance, took a walk with a deadpan and surprisingly bossy other acquaintance and even wandered into a catered office lunch. Each of these activities definitely took me away from the all-holy and ever proliferating to-do lists. Occasionally during an otherwise engrossing conversation, I would start feeling breathless because of visions of the white board jungle that lives on top of my desk and every task on it. But I got back on the assignment of being a mindful villager and everyone survived.

This week, a neighbour invited me to come over on a Saturday afternoon. A bunch of women were getting together to cook big quantities of freezer-friendly food to help a neighbour who is expecting a baby in a few days. The pregnant neighbour brought over the ingredients. It was a quick and cheerful two hours. I chopped a lot of onions.

Afterwards, I was happy to have gone. But before going? I dragged my feet and said several times to my family, “I may not go.” They all grunted. I needed to get dressed. I needed to fold clothes. I needed to clear my desk. I needed to buy groceries. And I hadn’t bought anything for the pregnant lady. “I may not go,” I said for the 10th time. Eventually the resounding, cheesy echo of “be the villager you want to be” drove me to put on kajal and leave the house. In the same mood as the chicken crossing the road to get to the Other Side, I went next door.

Next door was a bustle of chips and efficiency. I was reminded again of the reasons for the renewed post-pandemic success of Priya Parker’s 2018 book The Art of Gathering. My neighbour is the master of the low-pressure gathering that can leave you feeling nourished. I have heard via Parker devotees of gatherings where women have met just to wear an outfit that they love but are never going to wear Outside. Or others where people have met to just do paperwork chores they have been procrastinating over. Parker’s book, like my neighbour’s baby prep party, was meeting a heartfelt need. The Outside is intimidating. (I am intrigued and entertained to hear that her newest book is called The Art of Fighting.)

One neighbour made fun of me for frantically doubling the fractions in the recipes in my head. Another reminded me how I had tried to run away with someone’s cute baby the last time we met. Then she cut her finger while chopping capsicums and ran about explaining that she hadn’t done it on purpose to get out of cooking. And while I was standing at the stove, waiting for half a kilo of vegetables to cook down, I thought to myself that next February a new baby could be trying to walk around here when I tease my neighbour about cutting her finger to get out of cooking. And in the thinnest of onion layers, this February, I might be building a new village.

Nisha Susan is the author of The Women Who Forgot to Invent Facebook and Other Stories.