I have been thinking about naïveté as a superpower – or if not that, then at least as a form of intelligence, a gift, a gorgeous type of glitch, a moonshot even if a malfunction, a bulwark against a brutal world. Wait, if it is all these things, I meant what I said at first: it is a superpower.

            I have been thinking about this because I have spent this year trying to forgive myself for things that were never my fault, which is what the deep work of trying to heal from those things eventually led me to. The self-blame came when I named myself foolish, malleable, wrong. I tried to lean into bitterness and caution, and when I did, I found myself desiring to feel deeply, as I always had. That kaleidoscope of emotion could only come from openness, curiosity, vulnerability and risk.

I learned about a word recently – “rustout”, unlike burnout. To rustout in life, work or relationships is to feel no flash of inspiration, no spark, while to burnout is to short-circuit, to be forced to stop. To rustout is to be able to remain consistent, but without reward. Over time, something withers inside. The words have elemental origins: how instead of being incinerated, one is decayed by persistent drizzle. I think my naïveté should have razed long ago, or at least should be covered in iron oxide by now – and the truth is it kind of did both.

Yet, look: peeking through corroded chainlinks, arabesques of living green. On that scorched ground: commelina, touch-me-not, lantana. I invite it back, my naïveté, and I nourish it.

I will be forty in a couple of years, and my life is still only just beginning. I am so lucky to be almost old enough to think myself too old for newness – and so lucky that I don’t think so.

I forgot, until I found myself tracing old lines: I have been at this junction before, weary from other wars. I sipped on fortifying antivenins, and slipped on armour. Then, the allure of ingenuousness came for me again. I returned to the ways of the unjaded, even if another kind of cynicism hemmed the edges of my softness. I loved and learnt. I gave and was stolen from. I reaped reparations, I reaped what I sowed and the harvest was often lusher than I thought my life would allow me. Here I am, again and still. This life expands even as the heart and the spirit contract. Even as the world reveals itself – both in one’s own ambits and in vast, unpardonable injustices – to be darker, harsher, more greedy and more malicious than one has the capacity to imagine.

I fight myself, and fault myself, because I can’t imagine that anyone can do what has been done, yet it has transpired. In that unbelievingness is the most sacred part of my naïveté. Because I cannot imagine how anyone could do that, I am unlikely to do it myself. Innocence means to be without blame. I am. Naïve. Foolish – in the language of the Tarot – certainly. What a lovely, strange way to still be.

An edited version appeared in The New Indian Express in November 2023. “The Venus Flytrap” appears in Chennai’s City Express supplement.