Written by Alok Das
The Kitchen in the Tree House
This letter is a story about falling, institutions, and the worlds that emerge when recognition refuses to arrive.
Dear Alok,
I know things are not moving in the right direction.
Uncertainty keeps returning—just like last year, and the year before that. Every year, really. And this time, you feel depleted. Just like last year. Just like the year before that. Every year since birth.
Tell me: is it the end that frightens you?
Or is it the idea of ending as failure that paralyzes you?
You keep asking the question as though certainty might rescue you. As though one more diagnosis, one more meeting, one more expert opinion, one more institutional decision might reveal whether this is truly the end.
But you already know something most people spend their lives avoiding.
Everything ends.
What frightens you is not ending. What frightens you is that the ending will be interpreted as failure. That your story will be filed away as unfinished. Unsuccessful. Insufficient. Small.
And yet your life keeps presenting evidence to the contrary. Again and again, what looked like collapse later revealed itself as arrival. Again and again, what felt like falling turned out to be movement.
You have spent years studying systems, institutions, and power. You have become fluent in the languages of equity, inclusion, justice, and transformation. But there is another teacher that has followed you everywhere.
Failure. Or what others called failure. The failed migrations. The failed belongings. The failed attempts to fit. The failed efforts to become the kind of person institutions know how to reward. And every time, life kept happening anyway. Perhaps this story begins there. Not with success. Not with resistance. Not with triumph. But with falling.
Because Canadian higher education institutions presented itself as a destination. A place where effort would be rewarded, contributions would be recognized, and transformative work would naturally find a home.
Instead, it became another lesson in endings. Or what appeared to be endings.
You did not realize you were in a lifeboat until you stopped calling the ocean a workplace.For years, you mistook endurance for belonging. You believed that if you worked hard enough, cared deeply enough, built enough bridges, mentored enough students, organized enough communities, and softened enough edges, recognition would eventually arrive.
The institution loved diverse bodies that could be displayed. Photographed. Quoted. Celebrated.
It turns considerably less enthusiastic when those same bodies claimed authorship, demanded recognition, or refused to extinguish their fire for institutional comfort. You learned that some forms of violence arrive carrying flowers. And some endings arrive disguised as opportunities. The message came from many directions. Rarely directly. It never needed to be. Walk away. Do not question. Show joy, not resistance. Help us feel good about ourselves. Do not make us uncomfortable with our fragility. Do not name what everyone can already see. Get along. Be grateful. Be reasonable. Be the diversity body.
The remarkable thing about civility is that it presents itself as neutrality while functioning as discipline. The people with power could express disappointment, ambition, frustration, self-interest, and territoriality. But when you named harm, your words became impolite. When you asked questions, your presence became excessive. When you refused to be silenced, your truth became uncivil.
Well, the institution never asked you to stop speaking. It merely requested that you speak in ways that left power undisturbed. For a long time, you continued feeding the institution. Thinking that perhaps this time it would recognize you. Perhaps this time it would reward you. Perhaps this time it would acknowledge the labor, intelligence, imagination, and care you had poured into the work. The hardest realization was not that they failed to see you. The hardest realization was that they saw you clearly. And chose otherwise.
That realization felt like falling. But perhaps it was not. Perhaps it was another arrival. Because somewhere beneath the grief, another image kept appearing.
A tree house. A kitchen.A hurricane lamp.
Not an office. Not a boardroom. Not an awards ceremony. A gathering. People cooking together. Women. Gender-diverse people. Students. Scholars. Storytellers. People were laughing while food simmered. People were writing while children played nearby. People sharing stories that institutions considered too messy, too emotional, too complicated, too political.
The hurricane lamp came from the land of tigers. Not bright enough to impress anyone. Not bright enough to dominate the darkness. Just bright enough for people to see one another. Just bright enough to tell stories. Just bright enough to imagine a different future. And perhaps that is what had been trying to emerge all along. Not another title. Not another award.Not another institutional recognition. A methodology. A community. A way of being together. A counter-shelter. A place where knowledge could be cooked, danced, spoken, written, and loved into existence. Perhaps the opposite of erasure is not recognition. Perhaps the opposite of erasure is creation.
By falling, you would realize that the institution was never the horizon. It only pretended to be.
The horizon was always the kitchen. The horizon was always the tree house. The horizon was always the gathering. And life, as it had so many times before, began exactly where it appeared to end.
Allah Mohan. Allah Mohan. Allah Mohan.
Durga.Durga.Durga.
Love Always,
Alok
About the author:
Alok Das is author’s pseudonym. Author is based in Canada and a doctoral candidate and an international student advisor in a comprehensive university in Atlantic Canada.