Cultivating Joy As A Tool of Finding Yourself

By DJ Kiran (Darakshan Raja)

I had just submitted my resignation letter after being depicted as a leader unfit to lead. For self-preservation, I had resigned. I wasn’t the first woman of color to walk away after pouring so much into an organization, only for it to be erased and invisibilized. The toll of the work was debilitating. I had felt as if someone had sucked my life out of me, and I was leaving as a shell of myself. As a leader and an organizer, I had walked into movement and social justice organizations with romanticized notions of people and how they would move in integrity with what they preach. However, that is far from the reality of how movements work. In moments of intense conflict and a difficult political environment, organizations and their leaders turn on people who are disposable and under their control.   

As I resigned and reflected on what had transpired, I thought about what it meant to be a Muslim director of a small social justice organization where one of the main critiques against me was focusing too much on Islamophobia but not on issues of racism. I thought about how my own concerns with the state’s targeting of Muslim activists and organizers was minimized as me centering myself because I requested that our board take the security infrastructure needed to protect staff who seek to take on state violence as me being selfish. I also reflected on what it meant when people think you are unfit for leadership.  After all who actually thinks a South Asian Muslim woman can actually ever be a leader. Leaders are often others.  

In movement spaces, often, leaders are over there somewhere, people who make history, people who preach in front of millions, not those who sit in a dingy church office greuling over Quickbooks, budget sheets, emails, more google sheets, docs, and sacrificing personal life and time. I remember feeling rage at the imposition of boxes of leadership and other people’s projections on me. I remember feeling drained,  tired. This isn’t the type of tiredness sleep fixes. Its burnout, its heartbreak, and its disappointment. The tiredness didn’t come from the “work” or the issues. It was from the heartbreak of how people mistreat you, how people in social justice movement spaces move out of integrity from what they preach. Its about the tolerance of bullies, disrespect, and the humiliating ways people disparage and talk ill of you because you disagree or have other priorities in the work. Its about how people who benefit off your work, underpay you, fail to have your back, and then expect you to cater and accommodate their needs.   

I came into movement work feeling that these spaces would model something different. However, what I found at this workspace was betrayal, abuse, and spaces that mirror state structures of oppression and abusive relationships. My tiredness wasn’t just from the work I had been carrying, that is tiredness that rest can address. How do you address your tiredness when you are tired of heartbreak, heartbreak in people and how they shift. How many spaces do you run away in your life because of abuse? Family, your home country, community, town, and fuck now even in justice movements? Where is there actually sakinah. 

I needed a personal check-in. I had left this space, poured in and left as an empty shell.  

This is when I reconnected with my inner child and went back to trying to recuperate the joy I had wanted. I had neglected myself deeply. My entire identity cannot be the work I do or being in movement. It was unhealthy. This is where I went back to the younger child in me, the one who was a dreamer, the one who would literally dream up movie scripts, choreography for songs, loved superhero movies, and always was here telling my family this is how we would do a music video to this song. I had lost her somewhere. Someone had once asked me what I wanted to do with my life if I hadn’t been an organizer. I had said I wanted to be a DJ, specifically a bhangra DJ. I still remember listening to the beats of DJ Rekha, Punjabi MC, Dr. Zeus, Bally Sagoo and being absolutely in love with how these powerful DJs and music producers had been blending, mixing, and mashing up bhangra, bollywood, South Asian jams, with hip - hop, R&B, reggae, soca, and reggeaton. It was incredibly beautiful to see that within the music, so much of the different worlds I was living in, but didn’t fully belong to either world but a medley of it all, felt like home. I think as a young teen and a child growing up in working-class immigrant communities in the Bronx, figuring out identity was central and DJs allowed for that space to exist without having to pick between one or the other.  

That is how I picked up a mixer and through You Tube videos taught myself and started playing. That allowed me to think of ways you can cultivate joy, and identify outside of the “work” you do. Its a way to connect to the different cultures you navigate. Its a way to set the mood and an experience that for many cultivates joy. Music allows you to do that and good DJs can set the vibe of a room like no one. By focusing on my hobby, I began to pour back into myself and build myself back. That resilience is something I will hold on to forever, and with a good mixer, my DJ Serator software, and fire bhangra jams, I am excited to continue pouring back into myself and curate joyful spaces for myself and others.  

Listen to LahoretoBX Playlist by DJ Kiran