You remember when
Facebook put up short films reviewing the online-lives of its subscribers?
Boring as the films were, I couldn’t stop thinking about the man-hours spent in
watching all those films. Soon I found myself thinking of the Last Judgment. I surmised
freely and may God forgive me if I am wrong in these surmises.
What I thought was
that Heaven will last an eternity, because who knows, the Last Judgement will
take forever to carry out. Just imagine, the lives of everyone from Adam onward being played back on a giant screen! God the Judge presiding over the public
screening. One life-film at a time. Not one second of the person’s earthly life
edited out. There will be context for every action and hopefully explanation
for every judgment. Context and commentary… how wonderful!
And I thought in Heaven
will I really understand the people who were part of my life. A gallery of
faces passed before me and at the head were Papa and Mummy. The two people I’ve
spent my life trying to understand.
***
Papa and Mummy were children
in the 1940s. Growing up in Christian-dominated neighborhoods in the south, and
educated in their mother tongue. In early adulthood they moved to the north where
most people spoke another language and practiced another religion. Me? I was the
anxious offspring of migrant parents, growing up in shape-shifting Delhi.
Trying not to speak with “stammering lips and another tongue.” Unlike my
parents, trying too hard to fit in. But like them, existing in a zorb ball, separate
from others. Tens of other contextual factors that I know of but don’t fully understand.
Then there is the communication
– the inadequacy of its quantity and quality, especially where Papa was
concerned. He was a man of few words, even fewer where women were concerned.
And he brooked no careless word or gaze. Expressed his disapproval with a
fearsome look. I learnt early that he liked obedience and didn’t like a show of
disrespect.
But that was him as a
parent. What was he like as a child? As a young man. As a person.
***
You know the literary
concept of “unacted parts” – the Woolfian strategy of adding detail to the
personalities of characters, in one way, by breaking the unities of space, time
and action. Or “bubbles” – what the editing tutor at the film school I attended,
pointed to. Bubbles are moments in the film, he said, that are at once separate
from the narrative and inseparably part of it. The tutor was reviewing a film I
had been editing. Nothing New was inspired
by a few early memories of Papa. A film that was at once fictional and
intensely personal. A projection if you like of what Papa might have been like
as a young man and how I would have been altogether like him if I were male.
People’s responses to
the film told me where my mental picture of Papa could be correct and where it
was likely to be false. The making of Nothing
New gave me a handle with which to start a less passive process of trying
to understand him – a process that continues today, more than 8 months after
his death.
And somewhere along
the way I put together a Facebook-like film in my mind. With moments of Papa’s
life from years before we met and extending to his last moments if they had
played out differently. Made up entirely of unacted parts… They are fodder for my
introspective moods.
Here then is, not the
life-film that will be played in Heaven, but my short review film for Papa.
Papa as a little
kid
Papa is a chubby-faced
little boy. He enters the schoolyard where there are other kids his age and
older. He is delighted to see them. He calls out – Hey! When did you come here?
A smile in his voice. He talks as if he is sat on a throne – his mum’s lap. Factually,
I know that he was given away to his childless aunt whose husband it was who got
him enrolled at school. This mental picture of Papa’s first days in the
schoolyard, where he is too small to be taken any notice of, formed in my mind
years ago and I have revisited it often. Gradually, I realized something that
was probably as true for Papa as it is for me – loneliness chased us from the
start. We delight in human company.
Papa as a
born-again believer
Papa is in his early
20s. He stands in the courtyard of a church. It is somewhere in the north as he
is wearing a sleeveless sweater. He stands with his feet slightly apart, looking
towards a group of learned pastors. He lays a newly-gleaned Biblical truth
before them – trying to impress them and hoping too that they say something in
response. Something that will calm his inner doubt…. An “I believe Lord, help
thou my unbelief” kind of inner mood. Perhaps it is too late to know if Papa used
to grapple with moments of doubt. As I do. But I daresay in his case, a journey
that started with curiosity ended in stubborn faith. How will mine?
Papa as a
city-returned native
Papa dressed in
trousers and a white shirt. There is a smart belt around his middle. He and my
mother, who as always is dressed in a saree, are going to church. They are a
retired couple returning home to a small town where even the men still wear
traditional clothes (the mundu.) Especially to church. In the mental picture I
have of this unacted part, Papa is smug that he is standing out – at once
belonging and not belonging to his surroundings. I know the feeling.
Papa
bidding us goodbye
Maybe this is a corrupted
memory of how we left for one of the innumerable hospital stays. There’s Papa,
moments before his death. Not as it actually happened but as we might have
liked it to happen. Mummy and I are with him. Mummy hugs him and I kiss his
hands knowing the dreaded moment will soon be upon us. We are all crying. Papa
is almost bent over with sorrow. As the last moment approaches, Papa breathes
in, straightens and says slowly, “Alright.” I can’t bear to see how he actually
leaves us. What was he feeling? No fear of death really, but of the wretched loneliness
of the grave, the separation from love and warmth.
***
As it is written, “I
will go to him, but he will not return to me”.
And so I wait. Holding on to my curiosity and need
really to know my loved ones – Papa – better. I suppose when those life-films
are played on the heavenly screen…. Then.
