The few afternoons that I have left

I have the urge to put this down before the details slip away, and I feel like Jonathan when he stored away bits and pieces of his memory carefully in Ziploc bags. It was a good-for-nothing afternoon, perfectly useless after a late lunch, which progressed to give me a mild headache and an aching sensibility. Everything is Illuminated, is, as I learned, a book first and a film much later. It opens with WWII photo collections- old, tattered photos pinned on to some wall, and I was apt to dismiss the film for the baggage that such films normally bring. After Maus, I was very, very wary: I rarely touched any WWII material, no matter how delightfully packaged it was. However, I was lured into it initially because of a black ballpoint pen that wrote beautifully. Large unseemly scrawls in bold letters, marking out chapters like ‘The Commencement of a Very Rigid Search’ broke into pristine interiors and Elijah Wood’s giant, insect-like eyes magnified by his antiquated spectacles. Stark, whitewashed walls and old skin that wrinkled like paper, covered to the chin by a paper white sheet. Jonathan stares; at first, it is possible to mistake the austerity of his oiled and parted hair and severe spectacles for lack of compassion. But it is heartwarming to note the beginnings of a smile soften his pallid face when his grandmother motions towards him, and it is then that I realized that I shouldn’t read too much into his appearance, or anyone else’s, for that matter. The neat orderliness of Jonathan’s world is contrasted by the life led by a family in Odessa, Ukraine, who give heritage tours to Americans inclined on tracing their ancestor’s roots, and where, incidentally, Jonathan is expected in a short while. The chaos at the family dinner set off by the seemingly eccentric members- the narrator, a young Ukrainian who is suitably impressed by American pop culture, his parents, an irritable grandfather who thinks he’s blind and a demented collie called Samuel Jr. Jr.- spills over to the journey itself. What seems to be a sharp comedy, accented by lovely camera-work and a fitting score, soon turns into something entirely different.

Exactly where the story morphs into a journey of meaningfulness is uncertain, but I remember that I had to gasp when the sunflower fields parted and the shrine-like appearance of the cottage loomed into view, with the flapping white clothes on the lines all around it. Jonathan’s search for the woman who saved his grandfather’s life acquires meaning when the normally irascible grandfather broods behind the wheel, and observes his face when Jonathan isn’t looking. The narrator, whose English seems curiously perverted, offers Jonathan slight solace, but soon, he sets aside his translator’s duties to remark on the changed behaviour of his grandfather. Trachimbrod, the hamlet they were in search of, was wiped out by Nazis, and that it exists in a woman’s imagination and small, well-marked boxes seems incredible. But the poignancy of the late night walk to the river bank, and the stone plaque that remembers the dead somehow paves the way for the grandfather’s death in a tub by slitting his wrists. As Alex put it, he seemed to be more in his life in the last hours of that journey. When it is time for Jonathan to leave, and he hugs the collie, who had grown attached to him, it is a sort of beginning, rather than the end, for it is where both of them begin to realize that ‘everything is illuminated by their past’.

The story is undoubtedly, touching, but it was made remarkable by certain moments in the film, like the scene at the beginning, chronicling his grandparents’ deaths, and the scene where the odd party orders dinner. That Jonathan is a vegetarian complicates matters, and his wish to be served a potato is rendered wryly humourous by Alex, the grandfather and his dog. Each individual scene seemed complete in itself. That anybody could watch a few scenes from the film and not feel cheated or frustrated if it was necessary to walk away is a good thing, I suppose. And the fact that in spite of the minute details of time and place, both worlds- Jonathan’s American one and Alex’s mixed culture- seemed to be vague, unreal, yet frightfully universal, is worth noting.

Everything is Illuminated left me with dreams, and quite a few moments, and that was more than what I sat for.

Remembering Lady of Shalott

[I realize that this is in the same vein, but then...]

Dead of the afternoon, after the rains. The restive stillness has gone, leaving with a light dusting of quiet peace. I can now see the place in the mirror, the lush green of the field beyond, the trees dotting it, the Umbrella Tree looming in the foreground. The Assamese towel in red and white hangs on to the scene, the radio antenna on top of it. The place is so far beyond, yet surprisingly accessible- it’s as though it has been flattened, reducing its depth to a surrealistic degree. Twin swings hang in the middle, secured together by a chain; tall, unwieldy grasses have sprung up all around- the air of abandonment hangs heavy over it. But now it is a beautiful green, and I don’t mind the sprightly grasses, or the overhanging foliage of trees that have eaten up the dirt path. Turning right from there, was the place where I had tossed dead kittens in a shoebox into the grasses. Mosquitoes had formed an overarching column, rising over my head like a veil of gloom. Now the water has crept into every leaf and twig, swelling it to twice its size. I don’t see that, but the roots have been steeped in excesses, and the trees bursting at the seams. It’s only a while now before the light fades and the green is swathed in a purple glow. The place vanishes.

Like the place that could be seen from the window on the other side, I can’t see it any more. From Dadua’s room, a window spied on a family occupying the ground floor next door. It was only possible to see the kitchen, and the adjoining open space, where clothes and utensils were piled every morning for the maid to wash. Words were ground with spices, the mistress turned over in the pans fish heads, and the day’s activity ceased with the wash being hung out to dry. Overnight, the family disappeared, the kitchen door remained closed, and the courtyard became overgrown. The next family that moved in after a period of seven years, walled up the door, and shut the space out.

Spaces

It is a question of crossing thresholds. I’ve been rearranging prejudices for a long time now, under the guise of thinking. It is frightening to contemplate the degree of one’s blindness at a given period. It is like living in a sound-proof room, with no windows. Nothing comes in, nothing goes out. The point where the walls end and the other rooms start is a liminal space; to be crossed over; the threshold. And I think I’m there right now. Shared familiarity pulls me back, draws me in, yet the new promises resound in my ears, emboldening me, imbuing my thoughts with searing clarity. In time, that clarity would cloud over and become mouldy, and give way to a sharper reality, I know. But now, it is a curious time. Old fancies and hopes cannot be denied, yet their immediacy is lost. Green thoughts, budding with newer hopes, are bright, but uncertain. I’m trying to come into terms with this space by thinking out loud. Or, typing it out. As much as I avoid dramatizing each thought that crosses my mind, or each reminiscence that begs to be rediscovered, the events and the thought processes thus retold, betray a weakness for sensationalism.

I’m not the child-me. I outgrew her. But I don’t quite fit into bigger shoes. At times, it is difficult to sort out my priorities, new from old, immediate from uninvolved. It is akin to being ousted from a community, a trusted space, the feeling of being gradually disowned, of ensuing strangeness. Comfort tires out, bourgeoning excitement takes its place, yet there is a fear that the comfort thus lost, would never be recovered again. It is a time of apprehensions. Of misplaced feelings.

Kookaburra in a Tree

Like many of the vanishing treasures of my childhood, lie the Women’s Weekly magazines in crumbling heaps in the room that was once a kitchen, but now locked up perpetually. There is a mosaic sink in the corner, which, to everybody’s surprise, leaked water, and right next to it, on the concrete slab, are stacks of yellowed issues of Women’s Weekly and Soviet Woman in Bengali. Dated in the months of 1972 to 1981, most of them lacking jackets, and several pages, with pictures scissored off for Home Science projects, they are cloistered, shallow, ‘warmified’ worlds which introduced me to beef casseroles and Crown Imperial Fritillaria.

Imbued with a tinkling, wispy quality of fairytales, yet rooted to very contemporary English aspirations, the stories which ran in the issues were rather unimaginative, but to a child’s consciousness, not yet exposed to English niceties and seasonal blooms, it was a treat to be savoured. The way a girl sucks on candy and swirls the taste in her mouth, biting it in eagerness, yet sorry when the candy disintegrates and sticks to her teeth, I tried to enjoy the laughing advances of hedge-flowers and the imperious autocracy of pruned roses. The story lost itself in the rich worlds which the English found exotic, and which I exoticised in a very English way. Authored by women with fragrant names, very like the heroines in their stories, frozen in the summer of 1972, they were stories about English women, with fair hair, or sun kissed auburn, even glossy brunettes, with pale skin, slim legs and long, shapely fingers which were un-weighted by the opulence that was the hallmark of their romantic contenders or adversaries. There was a Hollywood gloss to their descriptions, like musicals shot in bright studio light- but never too much of it. Now it is customary to sneer at Hollywood gloss, but I don’t know, it’s eminently lovable at certain ages. To read is to relive the experiences of the unburdened and sometimes foolish heroine; sometimes you can forget what the story is about, and whether Gisela manages to capture the tall widower’s fancy, or whether the kiss is at an inopportune moment, but just absorb the descriptiveness of the narrative, alone, and wander in borrowed worlds.

"Lower and lower" "Down"

Mrs. Sparsit’s staircase is hers no longer, but it wasn’t hers to begin with. She just happened to spot it before anyone else did. Maybe even that isn’t true. But she saw Louisa coming down it, down, down, down. What was Louisa thinking?

I wonder if it’s possible to go up the Staircase that Goes Down. Or whether going down is the only right thing to do. I despise Mrs. Sparsit’s voyeuristic gaze. I despise her seeing the staircase, why should she? Why should anybody? Why should the light be on the staircase? Why should the base be in shadow?

There is a compelling section -not a section, almost three whole chapters- in Hard Times with a peculiar reference to a staircase, named Mrs. Sparsit’s Staircase, which shows Louisa’s steps, as she comes down it. There is a light shining on the staircase, the last stair is eaten up in shadow, and Louisa is in sharp relief. It is this image that haunts me -even after the ending has been played out, as close to a comic resolution as can be expected from Dickens- and I believe that everybody forgot about Louisa, who’s still on the staircase, starkly lit and quite alone.

It is not difficult to imagine being on the staircase, not necessarily being Louisa, but being another voyeur, who would like to observe the world as it appears from the staircase, and go down, two steps at a time, pause, and admire the view. What would be the view from the bottom? Would I have to shade my eyes to squint at the light and try and figure out whether the top is any different from the bottom? Do I believe it to be? For, you can never be at the top and make your way down. That, you can never do. You must always be on your climb down, down, down.

Crisis

I’m reaching what is known in common terms as a crisis of faith. In hindsight, however, it probably isn’t a crisis per se, but a slow erosion of faith, which doesn’t amount to life-changing decisions. It is, in fact, so gradual and unobtrusive, even innocuous, that I didn’t notice it at first. Like cells shedding, hairs falling, the wind blowing the dust away, it was fading. And, faith to me was doctored fear. I was taught to fear consequences. It was all a question of dull causality. ‘If you don’t do this…’ On a level, it was worse than superstition. Respect for rituals was inculcated carefully, like lining a jar with bean sprouts, but I guess, not carefully enough. Because I associate a certain degree of carelessness with faith. It was an offhand, slight manner with which they caught hold of me and poured it into me. It was almost an accident.

But, faith, I believe, is supplanted with more faith, new faith. There can never be an absolute absence of faith, a gaping void. Faith is knowing, very instinctively, that there is an order to things, a pattern, a design. Faith is knowing that everything fits, or fits in a way we don’t know of. Faith is acknowledging incompetence. Faith is the only thing that justifies the things that go wrong.

Resisting the onslaught of synthetic faith is easy. But, trying to change the way it shapes people isn’t. When that constitutes the core of all arguments, the spring of all feeling and thought, it is maddening. Then I wonder whether it is really synthetic. And whether I’m being pretentious. Maybe I’m being pretentious by saying that I’m pretentious. But that is where logic bows out and faith troops in. The end of the conscious and the beginning of the subconscious. I can’t see through faith because I can’t see beyond my conscious reasoning. I can never know faith, because I can’t reach it. But that doesn’t stop me from believing.

Musings I

There was Shinoo. He was a domestic help and a little more than that. I’ve heard stories of Shinoo and Lakshmi, who looked after me when I was a bed-wetting twit. I don’t remember him, though. His name rolls off my tongue like the name of a familiar person, but that is where it ends. I’ve heard that he loved me. In my mind, he is inexplicably linked to that doll’s bed in the attic which no one could get. I’d like to believe that Shinoo was the boy who taught me to gather tall grass and make a broom out of it. But he was not. We had been vacationing in _, when that particular incident had taken place. This, too, is a story first, and a recollection much later. I’m not even sure if it was a recollection. I remember having taken floating images and fashioned them into a pattern according to the story that I’d heard. And, so, I’d much rather believe, for the sake of simplicity, that it was Shinoo.

The big, black man who had carried me to see the elephants holds a strange memory. He smelled strongly when I was pressed to his smooth, cool skin, covered with a thin layer of sweat. I was terrified, absolutely hysterical. I wanted to be free from his grasp and go to my mother. But everybody was greedily taking in the scene before them. I, for one, do not remember the elephants at all. I only remember the pungent smell, so unlike anything that I had smelled before, and the overpowering urge to escape from the man.

Situations change and mould themselves according to what you’re thinking. It’s like an animal that can smell your fear, see through your veneer of forced calm and breathe down your neck, surveying your agitation with jelly-eyes. The atmosphere snaps and you’re left there alone, shivering. I didn’t want to be seen at a particular place, yes, and the thought blew itself up inside my head, dribbling down my ears as hot sweat. It was a moment of exhilaration. The auto emptied itself of passengers, clean and dirty, until I was left there alone, at the back, trying to hide my face behind my hair. My hands did not tremble, but the tips were so numb. The driver looked back, gauged me, then went back to his unclean pouch and jingled money. The sour, addictive smell of coins filled the interior of the auto. Then he took a sharp turn and drove into a petrol pump. I writhed in the seat, the tattered rexine slick with sweat. There was innocuous chitchat choking my throat, and the smell of fuel wafting around, the man was nowhere in sight. The shopkeepers on the opposite pavement did not stir.