What should be the right kind of expression when you speak
about death and unclaimed dead bodies? Looking at the artist and the researcher
who were making a joint presentation on unclaimed dead bodies against the
backdrop of a huge building that had a specially created facade with rusted
iron sheets, in an evening that was hot enough to feel suffocated, I was
thinking about the facial expressions of the people who generally talked about
death. The expressions of those presenters looked more pleasant than the
subject demanded though their voices imparted the required gravity and depth of
the subject.
In the dimly lit courtyard the adaptation of the Brancussi
head by the artist looked ominous. The lower light casted long shadows of the
speakers on the brick wall behind them, reminding the audience of all spirits
that still hovered around as they invoked issue of the unclaimed dead bodies.
The artist, a good orator himself, talked about death the way he talked about
life. The beautiful researcher with her shiny fair skin looked a small piece of
paper in which she had written small little cues that helped her to articulate
her thoughts.
Each sentence was punctuated by a silence but I thought that
the silence was lightened by a lingering smile on the lips of the presenters. I
must have been imagining that smile there because the gravity of death was so
strong that I needed something to lighten up my already troubled mind. Don’t
misunderstand me. I was not troubled by any memories of unclaimed bodies. In
fact I was troubled by unclaimed memories. Memories are such flecks of past
events that shower on us like snow filings and cover our being with a thin
layer of melancholy. Even happy memories have a melancholic side to it as we
try to re-live them in our imagination and become aware of the fact that such
moments cannot be re-lived with the same intensity any more. Melancholy does
not need a reason to manifest. If you are human being, there are always more
than enough reasons to be melancholic. Memories just trigger it.
Both of them wore black clothes; the artist in a pair of
black jeans and a full sleeved black shirt, and the researcher, a black
executive pants, black T-shirt and a black pull over. I listened to them
intensely and each word sunk into my being like unclaimed words. A minimal
audience sat enthralled by the information and data about unclaimed dead bodies
and I was sure that each person in the audience was thinking about himself or
herself as a dead body which they sincerely wanted to be claimed by someone. It
is a huge weight on anybody who chances upon thinking about death and imagines
the possibility of being unclaimed by somebody.
After the presentation most of us gathered there did not
want to talk much. We came out of the courtyard, stood at the steps, smoked and
those who wanted to talk at all, talked in hushed tones as if there were a few
unclaimed dead bodies were lying there in our midst. A friend had organized a
post-presentation party at her home. A flamboyant and outspoken lady, an artist
herself and an art collector in her own right had invited me also to her home.
At her home she stood in front of each painting that she had collected over a
period of time and explained the reasons for her to collect each of those
works. Her reasons were convincing enough like an array of liquor bottles with
recognizable and covetable brands arranged at the desk of her private bar. I
thought the people turned up for the party, including the artist and the
researcher had forgotten the topic that they had been talking and discussing a
couple of hours before.
I am not a sociable person. I do not do smooth talking. I
prefer silence to eloquence. Perhaps, that is one reason why I spend a lot of
time at my desk and write all those unsaid words piled up in my mind. I try to
avoid parties and if at all I attend some unavoidable gatherings I choose to be
a good listener, which often puts me into trouble. People who do not find
anyone to talk to, find me for sure and come up with some issues which I do not
want to listen or have any interest. Party talkers can talk on any issues
authentically and in most of their talks they are the heroes and in the
incidents that they narrate they are always the winners. Often self-centric
talks slip over to gossips which would definitely tarnish the identity and
personality of some people who are absent there and sitting elsewhere
absolutely unaware of the dung that is being hurled at them from some corner of
the world.
Luckily the post-presentation party was less crowded and I
counted the number of people, both males and females and was satisfied by the
more or less parity proportion between them. I was sure that each male would
find a female for alcohol induced conversation. And there are some
conversationalists always in such parties who generally hold the attention of
the majority thereby saving uninteresting people like me from losing grace. You
just need to be an absent minded listener around such people and nod your head
in regular intervals. Your eyes would glitter in such a way that a seasoned
observer of people like me could say for sure that the glitter in your eyes is
just a curtain behind which you hide an immense land of imagination and self
absorption.
The researcher, a beautiful lady from the US walked up to me
after sometime. She might have noticed my reticence and aloofness or she might
have been tired of the gravity of the topic she had been researching for a
number of years. Imagine someone coming from a far away country, doing research
on the unclaimed bodies in a different country, spending endless hours in
morgues, government offices and eating with sanitized hands that still carry
the smell of unclaimed death. It is horrible. I looked at her face from a
corner as she was coming to me with the same smile that I had seen when she was
presenting at the courtyard.
She asked me what I was drinking. I looked at my glass and
then at her glass. She was holding some white wine in a very sleek crystal
glass. For the first time I noticed that she was wearing a bangle studded with
white sparkling stones. I could not make out whether it was diamonds or some
other precious stones. Her facial skin was smooth but her fingers showed some
signs of tiredness as if they were threatening her with some impending
wrinkling. I told her that I was drinking some Black Label whiskey. She said
she enjoyed drinking whiskey but as she was flying back to the US by early
morning she preferred to drink only wine. I smiled at her. I thought she would
wake up with a heavy head and some hangover and her flight would be horrible.
She read my thoughts and told me that she was a frequent flyer. And we smiled
into the space which was there in the form of a rectangle half filled with
light and half with darkness.
Soon a few more people came around us and the corner was not
enough to accommodate too many people so we moved to the dining table. There
were eight chairs and we all sat and I realized that apart from the seven
people who were sitting and were having a serious conversation about some
serious matter out there at the garden, there were eight more people in the
party. The hostess hovered over us asking what we wanted and prodding us to
taste some exotic culinary experiments that she had recently learned while
travelling in Europe. And old man servant quietly came in regular intervals and
filled in the bowls and platters with several forms of fish, chicken, cashew
nuts, pea nuts, fried peas, sushis and innumerable varieties of other munchies
that I found like a strange people in a strange street who had made a strong
impression on me even if I had seen them in a fleeting glance. I could have
remembered their faces in any other land at any other time but I did not
remember their names or identities.
You should tell us a story, the researcher told me. I was
taken aback initially and I mumbled at her why she wanted a story from me. I
tried to joke saying that I was a person with no interesting stories. But
parties are such events that where even if someone asks you to stand upside
down for the heck of it there would be at least five people to join that chorus
of demand. So now all of them were asking me to tell a story. I thought that
this American lady did not know me or she knew me as a friend of her friend or
she might have read some stuff that I had written somewhere. But the rest of
the seven people knew me well. They knew me as one of the uninteresting persons
in the crowd. But now they were also demanding a story to be told by me.
Story telling is always a cathartic experience. The moment
you embark on telling a story, the you realize that you are not only narrating
the core incident that holds the story as a story but you keep inventing
incidents that would substantiate the core of it. Events and people come into
it as you go on telling a story and they independently take positions within
the narration and at times take the whole course of recounting into some other
direction. It is very difficult to snatch these characters back to the thread
of telling. A good story teller is one who let the characters move on their own
but knows when they should be pulled back so that digressions and straying
would not mar the gripping quality of the story being told. While telling a
story you purge yourself of those untold words, you whet your silence and you
become eloquent in a strange fashion. A story teller is like a very coy bride
who shows her sexual prowess in bed putting the bridegroom into a delirium of
happiness and desire, and goes back to her coyness and shyness once the act is
performed.
In fact I did not have a story to tell at that time. First
of all I was not a story teller. As a journalist who had been writing about
culture I had started having an aversion to anything that came with culture,
including the people. But sometimes it is like that you get into a karmic
relationship with what you do. You become very impulsive and however you try
you go around and report on cultural developments. I keep an objective distance
with the subject that I treat in my reports, articles and essays but at times
it becomes very difficult to treat a subject like an object. You tend to probe
a little more and get into the skin of the subject that you write about. May be
that is one reason like people still call me for events and parties. They must
be feeling that here is a person who could make a report out of nothing and
write about people who are not particularly anything or anybody. In fact, when
I look back, I too feel that I always liked people who are just nobodys. I
always think that those people who are not anybodys or we think that are just
plain and ordinary have more depth in them. They are like loose sand. If you
just step on them, they might suck you in.
Please tell, she insisted. I did not know why she wanted to
hear a story from me at all. Then I thought she was playing a practical joke on
me. After that I imagined her asking the same thing to uninteresting people
like me in whichever parties she attended as a way to add data to her research.
Or was a party thing that generally these people played, making someone to tell
a story? I thought it was a bit weird. But then there are people who tell
stories and listen to others’ stories in order to purge themselves and the
listeners of their sins. Story telling is a confession, may be; a confession of
those hidden secrets that never get an audience and die with the person who
hold those secrets. Isn’t it quite sad that people come to this earth, live a
life of consequence or no-consequence, gather a lot of experience, commit the
acts of piety and sin alike, keep so many unsaid words and secrets in their
minds and then exist without leaving any trace?
I felt something similar between the unclaimed bodies and
the untold stories. She was persuading with that same smile and same
enthusiasm. The chorus was cheering her up and coaxing me because they did not
have anything else to do than what they were doing. So I decided to tell a
story that I had heard from someone whom I happened to meet in a train journey.
I was reading a book of tarot cards, which I had picked up
from the railway station. I could have chosen any other book but I thought that
I could check out tarot cards for two reasons; one, the journey was short
enough to read a full length novel and long enough to read magazines that
carried nonsense under various titles and various names. I knew the trade very
well so I preferred not to pick up any magazines or weeklies. Two, I had never
read a tarot card book before. I thought of knowing my past, present and future
when I travelled between two stations. When I opened the book and flipped
through a few pages I realized that I was not interested in any of those things
discussed in the book. However, I kept on reading because I thought the most
ordinary and uninteresting things might be holding some hidden truths or secrets
for me.
From the next stop this lady came and sat opposite to me.
She was a dark lady with beautiful eyes. From behind the book I observed her
for a few moments. I noticed that she took not more than a few seconds to
settle down in her seat. She had a strange sense of calmness on her face. Her
eyes were distant in its gaze but still they had a sort of focus somewhere
beyond. With one single glance she assessed the people who were sitting in that
compartment and as she was doing it for a moment our gazes got locked and with
an unseen key she opened the lock immediately and viewed the passing landscape
outside the window. I looked at her long fingers and found that her nails were
discoloured or coloured by some stains. I thought she was working in some factories
or something. But soon I corrected myself as I could make out from her
personality that she was not a working woman. But it was not good to strike up
a conversation with a woman who had just come into the compartment and I
thought that would give a bad impression.
I did not know why and how, after a few minutes the book
fell down from my hand. I realized with jerk that I was sleeping. I bent down
to pick up the book and I found the book was not there. Here it is, said the
lady. At her right hand extended towards me was the book of tarot cards. It
fell off from your hand as you were gloriously dozing off, said she with a
smile that I thought she was not capable enough to smile. She was more like an
unreal person to me because her gaze was unsettling. The only real thing about
her was the stains on her nails. It is quite surprising that you reached the
Grim Reaper and you fell asleep, she continued with a smile. I looked at the
page where she had inserted her index finger while handing the book over to me.
I recognized the page though I did not recognize the Grim Reaper stuff in
there. It is the card of death, she said as if she were reading my thoughts.
She was seriously frightening me then.
Are you a tarot card reader? I asked her with some sort of
hesitation. No, said she. But I am interested, she added. What do you do? I
probed her as I had recovered from that initial shock of imagining her reading
my thoughts. I am a painter, she answered with such a confidence that I had
never seen in too many woman artists. Oh, that’s great, I said and I realized
that the stains at her nails were the remnants of the paint that she had used
for her latest painting. Immediately I started wondering what that painting
would be looking like. What do you do? She asked. I told her that I was a
journalist who reported culture. She gave me a smile of understanding. Suddenly
I felt that our conversation was ended then and there because she, unlike other
artists who used to cling on you the moment they heard that you were a
journalist who reported culture, showed a clear aversion to my profession.
I commute in this line almost every day. May be I sit in the
same seat every day, she told me without asking. I thought she was helping me
to come out of my confusion. And what about you? She asked me. No, I don’t. I
travel by autos as I live and work in town. And I am on an assignment to this
place. Now it was my turn to spill more information without asking. Somehow I
felt that I should have asked her about Grim Reaper, the death card. Are you
thinking about asking me about Grim Reaper, she asked me and a shiver passed
through my spine. I looked around to make sure that I was sitting in a second
class compartment of a local train that ran between two cities twice in a day
and there were other people in it. Yes, I was in a real time and I was not in a
fantasy world though this lady who was a painter now sitting in front of me
sounded and behaved a bit unreal.
No, I was not thinking in those lines but anyway as you
asked let me repeat why you particularly spoke about Grim Reaper, I tried to
hide my embarrassment and astonishment in some kind of journalistic
objectivity. Her eyes and lips, and the twitching of her cheeks told me that
she knew well that I was lying. Death is something very revealing, she told me
looking straight into my eyes. I nodded my head partly in belief and partly in
doubt. Death is something that assures of our very existence. Death also at
times surprises, not with its arrival but with deliberate hiding of its arrival.
I am not talking about death coming in the form of an accident, illness or
heart attack. Healthy people die without any ailment and we are shocked and
surprised. But death at times plays pranks with you by holding the information
about the death of a close friend of yours for a long time. It is not unusual.
What is unusual about such deaths is that all these while, when that person is
dead and gone, you imagine that he or she is alive, and you feel hatred for him
or her because he or she has not been contacting you for a long time and you
feel ditched because he or she was supposed to do something wonderful for you.
But you feel further irritated on that person who is already dead and gone but
you believe that he or she is alive, does not pick up your call because he or
she just does not want to be with you. And one fine morning you come to know
that he or she is dead for almost a year and you did not know about it at all.
What do you think about that person or his or her death is not so important at that
time. What is important at that moment is the realization that you were living
with a dead person all these while and keeping him or her alive by your own
hatred or love. Suddenly you feel that you had been carrying an unclaimed dead
body in your soul and some unclaimed memories. Death leaves a trace but what
about that death which puts you into a sense of guilt about a crime that you
have never committed, she asked me without flinching even for a moment.
I was looking for an answer as if I were a student in front
of a teacher who had just asked a question which did not have an answer at all
or the question itself was the answer. She knew my thinking and this time I was
a bit bolder. So I asked her whether she was recounting a personal experience.
She said yes and continued. I don’t run behind galleries or critics or even
journalists like you. I paint and show it whenever I get an opportunity.
Importantly, I realize the fact that there are many people like me who paint
but do not have options to show or sell their works. It could be out of
hesitation or lack of drive. I am not a victim of neither. I do not have
hesitation nor do I lack an inner drive. But I choose not to run a race. What I
do instead is that I look for artists who are like me. And over I period of
time I could get a few artists to work with me to organize shows of unclaimed
artists, saying this she laughed. First time I saw her teeth. They were small
and white. She held her teeth tight while laughed.
Then I met this artist, she continued and I listened. Her
name was Varuni Sen. She had been living in the city for almost fifteen years,
painting while home making and home making while painting. I met her in small
group show where she had one work hanging on the wall. I liked it. And I liked
her. And when I told her that I was going to do a show by the next year, she
held my hands and said that I could count her in. Then for a few months we were
sharing the progress of our works though we were not meeting that often. Then
one day, she stopped picking up my calls. I was counting her more than a
participating artist in my show. I was sad and the sadness turned into
bitterness. I was thinking ill about her. I continued calling her. Each time I
called her someone cut her phone. Then after some days they said, ‘the number
no longer in use’. I sent her emails. No reply came from her. I was forgetting
her. It happens like that. Someone fades into your memory when they fail to
keep the contact.
Then one day, the Grim Reaper came with his sickle and delivered
a message. I had opened my show with a few fellow artists in a small gallery in
the city. I went there and sat throughout the day. I did not expect too many
people to come in or the collectors to throng up to buy the works. I enjoyed
sitting there and chatting up with some occasional visitor. Some proved
interesting and some utterly boring. But then it is the part of all games. You
need to put up with different kinds of people. And one day a common friend of
mine and Varuni Sen walked in. The forgotten memories came alive and I was
furious. I fumed at her for the callousness of Varuni who never replied my
calls. My friend hugged me and stood in silence for a long time. I could not
make out why she showed this sudden display of affection. I freed myself from
her grips and held her at my arms length and looked at her face. She was
crying. What happened? I asked her.
Varuni had called her that day and told her that she was
going to meet me as agreed upon between us at the same cafe. I was waiting. In
the meanwhile, in her car she realized that she had forgotten packet of colours
that she had brought me from her recent visit in Paris with her husband. She
had called my friend to say that she was waiting down stairs and the driver had
gone upstairs to pick up the packet for me which was kept on the table itself.
But driver did not come down for a long time. Irritated and enraged on the
laziness of driver she went back to home. She knew that the driver had some
soft corner for the maid servant who was already married to a plumber. Varuni
walked into the house and found some strangers there. The maid and her plumber
husband were standing there with some confused look in their eyes which turned
menacingly cruel in a few minutes. To her shock she found the driver lying dead
on the floor. Soon they jumped over her and strangulated her, my friend was
still weeping. At that moment I stood there face to face with the hooded man
with a sickle; the Grim Reaper. Varuni was living in my bitterness while she
was brutally killed and gone. Her memories were lying unclaimed in me as I
decided to forget her when she stopped picking up my calls. Today I was trying
to reclaim her but she was gone.
I looked at her. She was not
crying. She was not looking shocked either. Her gaze was distant and focus was
beyond me. Suddenly she smiled. I did not know what to tell her. I wanted to
ask her a lot of questions and I was numbering them in mind with the same
journalistic verve I often carry with me like armour. The train slowed down and
with the same enigmatic smile she got up and said, that’s how we reclaim the
unclaimed memories, quite unexpectedly and accidently. Death is way of doing
it. Saying this she walked out of the compartment. I looked around to see
whether I was still in a fantasy world or in reality. It was real, the people,
the compartment and the woman who just left the place. People sat involved in
their worlds or in their mundane conversations as if I did not exist in their
reality.
You did not ask her name? Asked
the researcher when I finished my story. I said no. Why? I wanted to but was
not able to. There was a silence in the room. Eight people sat in deep silence
as if we were caught in a prism of time or frozen inside a large ice cube of
that room’s size. And I was sure that each one of them was reclaiming an
unclaimed body in their minds.
No comments:
Post a Comment