So many faces! Composed, clicked and stolen away from the fumes of time. Guess my thinking is not thoughts strung together but rather a slideshow of images. I could indeed relive all my life as a parade of faces, most of them shared, but a few existing just within me. Aren’t these few my precious ones, leading brighter lives than many of those I have preserved on film? I don’t mind having missed the chance to put them in print. Maybe all my craft and application wouldn’t have done justice to these faces. And some of them are too precious and personal to even have tried. Now I see them all clearly as if my closed eye-lids were a projection screen, despite all these drugs numbing my mind. During the passage of what seems like the final hours I am just glad that these images are giving me company, like you do Sugandhi.
Oh mom, here, you are: face withered and lost in a world of your own making. How much my own visage would resemble yours now-mine too has closed out communication. You had communicated so much with that fine economy of a danseuse until you went impassive in your old age, like a frozen lake. Occasionally your seething schizophrenia used to erupt like a Loch Ness monster. Stones dropped into that lake just sank not yielding me even the comfort of a few ripples. You became so different from rest of us-we, oceans and rivers murmuring incessantly and keeping each other happy with the illusion that we know what lies beneath the other. So many nights I have looked at you with all the years’ love and understanding, with all the intuition of my art: Is it hurt, is it puzzlement; are u lost, can u see your son seeking you? What do you feel, let me know. Don’t leave me in a lurch. I am your son, look at me like I am indeed your son. At least tell me whether you are happy or sad. Then something, back of my mind reminded me that rarely are humans found sitting in neatly defined binary states of joy and sorrow. I never knew till the end. Your impassive face was all you left me with.
These plugs, tubes, monitors, bandages, strapping me to life, taking the spirit out of me…how I wish it were true that one’s eyes were windows to one’s soul. Try reading them Sugandhi for I have no other way of speaking to you. Alas, it is now your time to seek me out.
Ah, Suleiman, come. You have visited my memories at the right moment! Suleiman the maker of masks and painter of portraits-you did with paints, brushes and canvass what I did with lens, blackbox, and chemical films. You opened my eyes to the universe of masks; you vested with me the gift to look at human faces as layer over layer of masks and unpeel them; you vested with me the gift to identify the most pristine of emotions and their most unpremeditated expressions. You taught me how our cultures mute our expressions; how wider our smiles could be, how heart rending our cries, how obscene can seem the most complete expressions of joy, shame, fear, and all the seven sins. Oh, how we traveled like vagabonds, seeking situations that were not found within the compass of modern human experience. Oh, how we sought out people who expressed as if they haven’t yet learnt of shame; who expressed as if other people ceased to exist. How long we have been together at mental asylums, maternity wards, drunken parties, cremation grounds, and nursery schools.
Do you remember the best passing-out photograph I had clicked, every kid in that kintergarden class are seen erupting with laughter while that girl in a pair of doubled-up plaits...wasn’t her name Ruba…crying because some fellow in the row behind had undone her ribbon. I didn’t let the moment go and pressed the shutter. Do you remember the terrorizing innards of that asylum. My fingers trembled, refused to go down on the button to click the sweep of strange gazes, chained limbs, and broken spirits. Or do you remember the time when we were discreet hangers-on in a cremation ground. That man had died a long-drawn death. Lung cancer, we gathered from broken conversations. He had lived gaily and generously, we understood, while the preparations were being done for the cremation. That the valiant efforts to save his life had gone on for just too long was evident from his body. The man was soon decked with firewood and his bare-chested son went around twice with the pot pouring out water from his shoulders. Then he was handed the firebrand. We were surprised that the son, a teenage kid, hesitated. As others looked on, and as the silence broke into murmurs of surprise, he went on, nimbly foraging the waist-folds of his dhoti and stuck a cigarette in his father’s mouth. Then he took the firebrand and lighted the pyre with a glad face. I had my camera and both of us were aware of the opportunity. But we couldn’t bring ourselves to it.
All those experiences made us forsake the luxury of harboring any illusions about man’s dignity. Upon folks like us fell the burden of harboring both the beauteous and the beastly within one breast. We drove ourselves to the edge of sanity and strained our faith in mankind. Then we recoiled and sought refuge in arts and religion. We studied dance forms for their expositions of bhava; we studied the tribal crafts to see how they had identified, analysed and decomposed human expressions. We saw spiritual masters and gurus and alas figured out a vast majority of them had just chosen just a different kind of mask. Then, you had left.
You left my eyes open for an ideal we had agreed upon at the end of all our travels: the still adult face. The antithesis of everything we had seen till then. A clear face that stood steadily mounted upon a still being. A pendulum that rested, after all its trials and tribulations, at the centre. It was not my mom’s placid face that didn’t let one in but a face which simply did not have anything to hide. It wasn’t just anyone’s happy face, certainly not a kid’s. It was not a stoic patience which only had misery neatly tucked beneath. It was more than contentment that rested smug in a turn of fortune. It could be a kind of absorbedness, but with nothing in particular. It was definitely peace. Oh it was more than all these. From then on my travels ceased but my eyes opened. And how I looked! It wasn’t a search marked by desperateness but wholeheartedness. When I discovered that the image I was seeking was very much a part of me…
Sugandhi, ah you are back, looking over me. Outside, are they all sad? Would you be able to take it well, will you move on? You are pressing my arm, you are seeking meaning in my face. There is so much I could tell you. But what could I feel now that you can’t so much guess? What could I think that could surprise you? I am just going through these images you know. I feel as if these esteemed friends of mine have come to bid me farewell, probably at the right moment! Ah these cemented, atrophied muscles…Sugandhi my face is dead, you know that, so simply read my eyes. Let me take your palms into mine. Oh that smile of yours, keep smiling. Yet do I see a thin film forming over your eyes? Are you giving way? The film breaks open into a stream of tears and instead of draining down my cheek gets stranded and lost among my stubble. Its time I close my eyes you know. Everyone has bid farewell except you. We have been so much together that you might think I wouldn’t have you in my mental scrape book. Yet, do you know my most precious image is yours.
Do you know Sugandhi, would you remember? In the hospital room a week after Nithya was born…your health had stabilized, the flow of eager relatives and friends had ebbed. That forenoon as the crows’ caws drifted in along with the breeze and solid pillars of light and dust formed spots on the clean hospital floor, you, Sugandhi, younger and stouter was sitting upright after a long restful sleep. I had been sitting by your side watching mother and child in sleeps that till recently had been tucked one inside the other. Sugandhi, you were catching up with household issues and I was feeling a little like a school kid pulled up on account of his pending homework. If there could be stops like these from time to time life was definitely worthy, I thought looking at you. At that moment something clicked in me. You had that look I had kept my eyes wide open for years. I knew this was it. The human face at its simplest...you know, not a single palpable emotion was evident on your face, not a single thought, I was sure, playing about in your mind. A human face not exuding anything at all except a kind of sweetness. We kept looking at each other for a long time and I was trying to imbibe every detail of your face. There was a camera in the bag I had brought along. Yet I did not know how to manage a picture of yours without running the risk of breaking the balance. It was as if time had forgotten to flow, everything seemed so still, and any motion on my part would only set time in motion again. Then I remember turning around as delicately as possible, almost tiptoeing, towards the table which had the usual hospital paraphernalia, to take my camera out of my bag and set it. Alas the inevitable had to happen. My chance was despoiled by your surprising look when you figured out that it was my camera I was meddling with and not a glass of Horlicks you thought I was fixing for you. Would you remember I then asked you what you felt like. You answered, your curiosity piqued, that it was nothing particular, that you were merely glad.
Oh mom, here, you are: face withered and lost in a world of your own making. How much my own visage would resemble yours now-mine too has closed out communication. You had communicated so much with that fine economy of a danseuse until you went impassive in your old age, like a frozen lake. Occasionally your seething schizophrenia used to erupt like a Loch Ness monster. Stones dropped into that lake just sank not yielding me even the comfort of a few ripples. You became so different from rest of us-we, oceans and rivers murmuring incessantly and keeping each other happy with the illusion that we know what lies beneath the other. So many nights I have looked at you with all the years’ love and understanding, with all the intuition of my art: Is it hurt, is it puzzlement; are u lost, can u see your son seeking you? What do you feel, let me know. Don’t leave me in a lurch. I am your son, look at me like I am indeed your son. At least tell me whether you are happy or sad. Then something, back of my mind reminded me that rarely are humans found sitting in neatly defined binary states of joy and sorrow. I never knew till the end. Your impassive face was all you left me with.
These plugs, tubes, monitors, bandages, strapping me to life, taking the spirit out of me…how I wish it were true that one’s eyes were windows to one’s soul. Try reading them Sugandhi for I have no other way of speaking to you. Alas, it is now your time to seek me out.
Ah, Suleiman, come. You have visited my memories at the right moment! Suleiman the maker of masks and painter of portraits-you did with paints, brushes and canvass what I did with lens, blackbox, and chemical films. You opened my eyes to the universe of masks; you vested with me the gift to look at human faces as layer over layer of masks and unpeel them; you vested with me the gift to identify the most pristine of emotions and their most unpremeditated expressions. You taught me how our cultures mute our expressions; how wider our smiles could be, how heart rending our cries, how obscene can seem the most complete expressions of joy, shame, fear, and all the seven sins. Oh, how we traveled like vagabonds, seeking situations that were not found within the compass of modern human experience. Oh, how we sought out people who expressed as if they haven’t yet learnt of shame; who expressed as if other people ceased to exist. How long we have been together at mental asylums, maternity wards, drunken parties, cremation grounds, and nursery schools.
Do you remember the best passing-out photograph I had clicked, every kid in that kintergarden class are seen erupting with laughter while that girl in a pair of doubled-up plaits...wasn’t her name Ruba…crying because some fellow in the row behind had undone her ribbon. I didn’t let the moment go and pressed the shutter. Do you remember the terrorizing innards of that asylum. My fingers trembled, refused to go down on the button to click the sweep of strange gazes, chained limbs, and broken spirits. Or do you remember the time when we were discreet hangers-on in a cremation ground. That man had died a long-drawn death. Lung cancer, we gathered from broken conversations. He had lived gaily and generously, we understood, while the preparations were being done for the cremation. That the valiant efforts to save his life had gone on for just too long was evident from his body. The man was soon decked with firewood and his bare-chested son went around twice with the pot pouring out water from his shoulders. Then he was handed the firebrand. We were surprised that the son, a teenage kid, hesitated. As others looked on, and as the silence broke into murmurs of surprise, he went on, nimbly foraging the waist-folds of his dhoti and stuck a cigarette in his father’s mouth. Then he took the firebrand and lighted the pyre with a glad face. I had my camera and both of us were aware of the opportunity. But we couldn’t bring ourselves to it.
All those experiences made us forsake the luxury of harboring any illusions about man’s dignity. Upon folks like us fell the burden of harboring both the beauteous and the beastly within one breast. We drove ourselves to the edge of sanity and strained our faith in mankind. Then we recoiled and sought refuge in arts and religion. We studied dance forms for their expositions of bhava; we studied the tribal crafts to see how they had identified, analysed and decomposed human expressions. We saw spiritual masters and gurus and alas figured out a vast majority of them had just chosen just a different kind of mask. Then, you had left.
You left my eyes open for an ideal we had agreed upon at the end of all our travels: the still adult face. The antithesis of everything we had seen till then. A clear face that stood steadily mounted upon a still being. A pendulum that rested, after all its trials and tribulations, at the centre. It was not my mom’s placid face that didn’t let one in but a face which simply did not have anything to hide. It wasn’t just anyone’s happy face, certainly not a kid’s. It was not a stoic patience which only had misery neatly tucked beneath. It was more than contentment that rested smug in a turn of fortune. It could be a kind of absorbedness, but with nothing in particular. It was definitely peace. Oh it was more than all these. From then on my travels ceased but my eyes opened. And how I looked! It wasn’t a search marked by desperateness but wholeheartedness. When I discovered that the image I was seeking was very much a part of me…
Sugandhi, ah you are back, looking over me. Outside, are they all sad? Would you be able to take it well, will you move on? You are pressing my arm, you are seeking meaning in my face. There is so much I could tell you. But what could I feel now that you can’t so much guess? What could I think that could surprise you? I am just going through these images you know. I feel as if these esteemed friends of mine have come to bid me farewell, probably at the right moment! Ah these cemented, atrophied muscles…Sugandhi my face is dead, you know that, so simply read my eyes. Let me take your palms into mine. Oh that smile of yours, keep smiling. Yet do I see a thin film forming over your eyes? Are you giving way? The film breaks open into a stream of tears and instead of draining down my cheek gets stranded and lost among my stubble. Its time I close my eyes you know. Everyone has bid farewell except you. We have been so much together that you might think I wouldn’t have you in my mental scrape book. Yet, do you know my most precious image is yours.
Do you know Sugandhi, would you remember? In the hospital room a week after Nithya was born…your health had stabilized, the flow of eager relatives and friends had ebbed. That forenoon as the crows’ caws drifted in along with the breeze and solid pillars of light and dust formed spots on the clean hospital floor, you, Sugandhi, younger and stouter was sitting upright after a long restful sleep. I had been sitting by your side watching mother and child in sleeps that till recently had been tucked one inside the other. Sugandhi, you were catching up with household issues and I was feeling a little like a school kid pulled up on account of his pending homework. If there could be stops like these from time to time life was definitely worthy, I thought looking at you. At that moment something clicked in me. You had that look I had kept my eyes wide open for years. I knew this was it. The human face at its simplest...you know, not a single palpable emotion was evident on your face, not a single thought, I was sure, playing about in your mind. A human face not exuding anything at all except a kind of sweetness. We kept looking at each other for a long time and I was trying to imbibe every detail of your face. There was a camera in the bag I had brought along. Yet I did not know how to manage a picture of yours without running the risk of breaking the balance. It was as if time had forgotten to flow, everything seemed so still, and any motion on my part would only set time in motion again. Then I remember turning around as delicately as possible, almost tiptoeing, towards the table which had the usual hospital paraphernalia, to take my camera out of my bag and set it. Alas the inevitable had to happen. My chance was despoiled by your surprising look when you figured out that it was my camera I was meddling with and not a glass of Horlicks you thought I was fixing for you. Would you remember I then asked you what you felt like. You answered, your curiosity piqued, that it was nothing particular, that you were merely glad.
