On a day just like any other, I read in the newspaper, a death had occurred in Calcutta, just like so many other. An image of a man lying prostrate on the ground, having consumed poison, the mythical hemlock. The photograph held my attention more than the others, more than the text surrounding it, more than the bold headline on top of it, more than the tiny subtitled text below the image.
The room held my attention, the objects in the room, having reduced to mere props on the stage of his death, the man’s death. The room had an unkempt bed, bed sheets and pillows ruffled. Next to the window with iron bars akin to a prison lay the table. Papers, and notebooks lay there. Adjacent to the window laid a massive bookshelf, books and papers pouring out, almost as if one shake would disbalance the whole balance of the bookshelf. There was a table lamp on the table, and a bottle of ink.
I put down the newspaper, for I didn’t want to know more about the individual, I didn’t wish to. For by knowing who he was, what he did, where he came from, I would insult his death, his non-existence. But something in the image held my attention, a book lay beside the dead body, the title of the book was scribbled out with black ink, only the subtitle was visible, ‘An Anthropological View of Calcutta Slums’. The writer’s name was scribbled out with red ink, almost akin to a blood smudge. Images floated in.
-x-
In his birth is embedded hopes and aspirations of his parents. He is an outcome of the socio-economic background that his destiny has forged for him. The hero's birth is preluded by a day of storm. His parents' hopes and aspirations are evident, a petite-bourgeois life in the posh South Calcuttan neighbourhoods, taxi rides, and not bus rides or metro rides, fill the screen.
The hospital of his birth is in a high-rise apartment, glasses, the nakedness of the bourgeois existence fills the screen. His parents name him 'Sthir', status quo, equilibrium. They paint a future for him in their mind's eye, a life of stability, of financial and material stability, of ideological stability.
The day of his death is just like any other day, a minor dent in history, a rather forgettable one in the narrow lanes of Calcutta slums. Books abound in his room, his place of solace among the living and bustling neighbourhood with red flags, orange flags, green ones and the tricolor, a jarring amalgam of symbols. His body lies in the centre of the room, forgotten, unnoticed.
The camera swifts across disparate villages and mountains, journeys he was once a part of, places he had once laid his foot on, places he once belonged to, though only ephemerally. After all, life is ephemeral, a minor spark, a minor history among the multitudes.
There among that lost and forgotten room in the slum, the door opens. A woman enters. The mythical mother figure who wishes to forgive him, redeem him. The true mother never arrives, nor does any woman, for that matter nor does any man ever arrive. He is forgotten, he is lost among the footnotes of history. He becomes 'Sthir'. He becomes what his destiny forged for him.
The room held my attention, the objects in the room, having reduced to mere props on the stage of his death, the man’s death. The room had an unkempt bed, bed sheets and pillows ruffled. Next to the window with iron bars akin to a prison lay the table. Papers, and notebooks lay there. Adjacent to the window laid a massive bookshelf, books and papers pouring out, almost as if one shake would disbalance the whole balance of the bookshelf. There was a table lamp on the table, and a bottle of ink.
I put down the newspaper, for I didn’t want to know more about the individual, I didn’t wish to. For by knowing who he was, what he did, where he came from, I would insult his death, his non-existence. But something in the image held my attention, a book lay beside the dead body, the title of the book was scribbled out with black ink, only the subtitle was visible, ‘An Anthropological View of Calcutta Slums’. The writer’s name was scribbled out with red ink, almost akin to a blood smudge. Images floated in.
-x-
In his birth is embedded hopes and aspirations of his parents. He is an outcome of the socio-economic background that his destiny has forged for him. The hero's birth is preluded by a day of storm. His parents' hopes and aspirations are evident, a petite-bourgeois life in the posh South Calcuttan neighbourhoods, taxi rides, and not bus rides or metro rides, fill the screen.
The hospital of his birth is in a high-rise apartment, glasses, the nakedness of the bourgeois existence fills the screen. His parents name him 'Sthir', status quo, equilibrium. They paint a future for him in their mind's eye, a life of stability, of financial and material stability, of ideological stability.
The day of his death is just like any other day, a minor dent in history, a rather forgettable one in the narrow lanes of Calcutta slums. Books abound in his room, his place of solace among the living and bustling neighbourhood with red flags, orange flags, green ones and the tricolor, a jarring amalgam of symbols. His body lies in the centre of the room, forgotten, unnoticed.
The camera swifts across disparate villages and mountains, journeys he was once a part of, places he had once laid his foot on, places he once belonged to, though only ephemerally. After all, life is ephemeral, a minor spark, a minor history among the multitudes.
There among that lost and forgotten room in the slum, the door opens. A woman enters. The mythical mother figure who wishes to forgive him, redeem him. The true mother never arrives, nor does any woman, for that matter nor does any man ever arrive. He is forgotten, he is lost among the footnotes of history. He becomes 'Sthir'. He becomes what his destiny forged for him.
