Magnet

The lower side of the small wooden cupboard, kept next to my bed, has been home to a circular box with buttons, needles and threads of this house. The box and its place have not changed over the last 26 years. Although, during the early days of my childhood it had a companion  - an elegant perfume bottle which belonged to my Bade Papa. I remember Magnet for the shape of its head and the logo which emulated the bottle design. I remember Bade Papa, dressed in his off white shirt and dark trousers, wearing this perfume before leaving the house every morning. It was such a part of his routine! And a such a dot tiny part of my memory of him.

I was looking for a courier shop at a random market this morning. While talking on the phone, I walked into a small lane where I spotted Magnet sitting in a dilapidated window of a tiny shop. I knew I had to buy it at once. The shopkeeper said it was handkerchief perfume! I laughed! Bade papa used to wear handkerchief perfume! I bought it never the less, thankful for having found it after all these years!

On my way back, I realized it has been exactly one year since Bade Papa died. I don't know if this was his way of couriering Magnet to me but I am happy; it has found its way back to the wooden cupboard, next to the needle box after so any years. I am even happier that I will smell like Bade Papa now. And together we will smell like handkerchieves! ;p

The Last Song

I remember the first time I saw raw footage of Bade Papa's interview. It was the first time I saw him after his death. His dead face which I never saw, had come alive, in full flesh and blood, within the two dimensions of that video. I dreaded that editing process. Not even a month of not seeing him dead, I had to see him alive, over and over again, for a month. The first day of editing, I felt nothing. Then I felt the need to cry. Then I told myself that I should just cry as much as I want to and get over it. I told myself to get over Bade Papa's death and get over the need to cry every time I saw his living face.

I would go to the edit room, start the machine and open his sequence and watch his whole interview. Everyday. I remembered how he laughed, how he looked up like a lost child when he forgot, I remembered the bulging veins of his hands, his hearing aid, white hair and off white shirt. Always that off white shirt. With time, I stopped crying and started laughing at him and his toothless smile. How cutely he sang the song and got all the lyrics wrong. How adorably he laughed while singing to me, how unaware he was of the camera and crew that surrounded him. How deep in this thoughts, he made all of us wait and still didn't remember that song!

That was the beginning of the period, by the end of which, he had completely forgotten me.

That day he lay on that bed and stared blank at me. His body had given up. I had picked up his pained legs, shivered at his excruciating screams and sat next to him rubbing his hand. He looked at me blank like he didn't know me. I screamed in his ears that it was me 'shippa', that I had come from 'bambai'. He just played with his hearing aid which buzzed from time to time. Maybe he never heard me, else he would have remembered me. I even sang our song 'chan kittha guzari ai'. His lips had parted to smile. Maybe he did hear me after all. Then why didn't he give me our last moment together?

Sometimes I revisit my film only for him. Perhaps it has that moment.

The Rockstar of my film!

Suddenly remembered how I bullied him into singing a song for me on camera. 

I think it happened a year ago 

I wonder if we can bond over our short hair

It's been more than two month since Amma stopped coming to our house. When my mum asked Prakashi, her daughter-in-law, she said Amma has now, after more than 100 years, started to lose her memory. Really fast. They have cut her hair short because she cant't take care of it anymore. I want to visit Amma and I fear she too won't recognize me.

 

After watching my film

My friend said I laugh like my Bade Papa! 
Thank you for saying that. You don't know what you've done :)

Bade Papa

To watch someone.
To watch someone in pain. In screaming excruciating pain. So much pain that every muscle that moves exudes trauma which suffocates the air. The trauma of physical pain.

To forget.
To forget faces you knew all your life.
To be lost in memory. A black hole of a lived lifetime.
An inability to remember faces. A convenient smile of helplessness.

To eat.
Mashed food disguised in fluids. 
And throw up traces of memory that dry on a blistered tongue. 

Control. Over body. Over pain. None.
Only Morphined body. Morphined pain.

To not watch someone die.
Not watch a ceremony.
Not see a body one last time.
A body which once lived.

To find a performance.
To find yourself in it.
And not know whether you like it or not.

He forgot my face in three weeks. He lost his sense of coherence in three weeks. He was in unimaginable pain for three weeks. I wanted him to recognize me at least once. I wanted to have a moment with him. One last memory with him which would have been our secret. Kept for a lifetime. His and mine.

I feared he would die in front of my eyes. He didn't.