Hello, dear reader!
For the longest time, I hated the story of Alice In The Wonderland (a quick summary here if you skipped it). Something about the fact that she kept shrinking and expanding used to make me feel very uncomfortable. But rereading it recently, I found that I really like Alice - she isn't a little girl who gets lost in a rabbit hole - she’s bored so she follows a rabbit down a hole, and then proceeds to break into other people’s homes because she’s curious, she has adventures, invites herself to tea parties, gets into fights, flies into rages, and has a good time.
I loved Lewis Carrols’s nonsensical world and this story which doesn’t preach any morals. My adult reading of it is - the world is nonsensical; the only way to get by is to accept this and be nonsensical yourself; and that in this nonsensical world, change is constant, just like Alice’s size - you’ll keep shrinking and expanding, just go along with it.
One of the best things I’ve watched recently is About Love by Archana Phadke (available to stream on MUBI India) . It’s a beautiful documentary in which the filmmaker follows her family around, making observations about love and marriage in Indian families. It’s a very personal story, which somehow makes it all the more relatable and engaging.
A very small exchange between grandfather and granddaughter from the wonderfully nostalgic Mango Cheeks, Metal Teeth - “Geetha rested her head on his shoulder and gave him a hug. It was the days before people said things like “I love you”, so she just squeezed him tighter than usual”. Have you heard your grandparents say those three words? Do people in your family say it?
“Love” is concept that’s largely skirted around in our society - yes, we talk endlessly about marriage, family and companionship (in that order), but it’s only recent generations that had the privilege to consider love as a factor in deciding their partners. In fact, even today at weddings, you will hear hushed whispers clarifying whether it’s a “Love Marriage”. And not just romantically - even in familial relationships, “love” isn’t a commonly used word - it’s expressed in other ways.
“That's just the way nostalgia works: It is not a collection of memories, but a reinvention of memory itself. It's misremembering your own life on purpose”, says Richard Linklater. As someone who has been a bit wary of nostalgia off late, I’m going to indulge in other people’s nostalgia for a bit:
My uncle, who relocated from Bombay to the US in the ‘90s, shared this a picture of a suitcase sometime ago:
He wrote: “rummaging thru the attic i found the suitcase I came with to this country more than 25 yrs ago. The suitcase, 200 bucks in my pocket , a song ( remember the Doors ‘universal mind’ ? ) & an air ticket from Frankfurt to California . Hitherto, all wisdom I possessed was derived from album sleeves, the bands I listened to were not exactly original either, …. ‘Took my chances on a big jet plane, Someone told me there's a girl out there with love in her eyes and flowers in her hair … ’ Zeppelin - Going to California’. Over the years, the part about the money changed nominally, but not the wisdom.”
I love how we connect songs and objects to memories from a certain time in our life. From just a suitcase, memories tumble out, a remembering of a past version of yourself.
A friend’s father cycled from India to the USA to watch the LA Olympics in 1984. He travelled for around 2 years on his Flying Pigeon bicycle, though 47 countries, stopping en route to see different countries and to work in order to fund his trip. He was obsessed with the Olympics and had this absurd brainwave to cycle all the way. It’s so cool that he went through with it, fuelled by his own passion, because it’s the kind of thing that would not make sense to most people - imagine trying to justify a two year long bicycle trip! Sometimes you feel an urge, a sudden calling, and you just go with it. Journeys that unusual goals grant you are usually fascinating, often more so than the actual goal.
Apparently, in the 70s there were rumours that if you put a special screen in front of a TV, a black and white television set would turn into a colour TV. People were in a rush to buy one, till they found out that it was an April Fool’s Day prank. Imagine how exciting the prospect would have been! And then how disappointing it would have been to realise that technology didn’t actually exist.
Some more nostalgia since I obviously abhor it : Navin Thomas, a Bangalore-based photographer, found a bunch of discarded photograph negatives in a scrap yard. Apparently people who found them were selling them for the silver nitrate in the negatives. So he “rescued” them, lakhs of these film negatives, and worked on creating an archive which builds a picture of a different time through stills of everyday life.
I’m in love with Bar Boy, a painting by the artist Salman Toor, in which a man stands alone, staring at his phone, surrounded by couples in a queer bar. It communicates so well that familiar loneliness of being in a crowded place, and the common practice of diverting your attention from discomfort to your phone screen, the false sense of connection which makes loneliness feel even lonelier. Maybe Bar Boy is on a dating app, maybe he’s waiting for someone to get there - there’s something about the colours and the framing and the strokes and the detailing and the characters that give so much life and feeling to this still image.
Salman Toor’s work depicts mainly South Asian and queer characters in what feels like living and breathing scenes from life. There’s something about his use of colour, or the specific scenes he chooses to paint - often, a certain moment just before something is about to happen, or hasn’t happened just yet, and that moment is suspended, committed in these dreamlike greens - that transport me to a distinct feeling for which I have no words.
When I see a painting or film I like, I sometimes ask myself what it means. I like what Robert Bresson said about wanting his audience to feel his films before understanding them. That’s the way I prefer consuming art - experience it, feel it, absorb it, and only then try to understand it in words.
As Maya Angelou said, “… people may forget what you did but people will never forget how you made them feel”. When you’re sitting in the dark, and your breath catches while watching a film; or you’re in traffic, listening to a song for the first time - and you don’t know it yet, but it’s going to become your favourite song - it doesn’t matter what the symbolism means or who it was made for. What matters is how it made you feel. Hold on to that, because that is connection, the starting point for all human communication.
We are now in that part of the year where various celebrations stand in line, at one-arm’s distance from each other, at attention, waiting to be called upon. I hope that you are creating your own rituals, celebrating with a sense of community and togetherness, that you’ve accepted the certainty of constantly shrinking and expanding, that you’ve snapped out of the cell phone daze that Bar Boy is in, and are connecting with those around, and far away.
With much love,
Nitya