Erasure

She
opened the door
and said,
'there's no one at home'

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.

Appear Disappear

1.

The thought
that I have finally forgotten you
is also the thought
that reminds me of you

2.

The thoughts
are finally my own
(but not quite)

3.

I play this game
of remembering and forgetting

4.

You just
appear disappear

5.

I live in my head
and you
of course
live somewhere else

This time last year

This time last year
was full of screams
loud insulting screams

It was full of tears
shameless tears soaked in self pity
in self doubt

it smelt of damp monsoon
algaed over the leaking wall
It smelt of dirty feet
and dirty thoughts

This time last year
was so angry
full of boiling silences
simmering
shivering

It was full of love
and full of
unimaginable hate

Smelt of bad people
with sweat patches
of bad behaviour
and bad words

This time last year
was sad
trippy
and slow

This time last year was so hard

But this time
this year
two monsoons since

I walk in the drizzle
with my face to the sky

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.

 

If you forget me

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land. 

-- Pablo Neruda

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.

Slowness

Our period is obsessed by the desire to forget, and it is to fulfill that desire that it gives over to the demon of speed; it picks up the pace to show us that it no longer wishes to be remembered; that it is tired of itself, sick of itself; that it wants to blow out the tiny trembling flame of memory.
                                                                                                                                              
-- Milan Kundera