The Stories I Tell, Share and Hide

I have many stories to tell. And there are many more that I can’t tell. The stories I can tell, I sit with people across the table and tell them with cinematic twists. Sometimes I add melodrama and spice to it. Some stories, I tell people with pride and joy. And there are many more which I tell them with the right mix of drama, humour and poignancy. Then I go back, earning their pity, love and friendship. Sometimes, I even return home with their admiration.
There are other stories that I pick and choose to hide it silently under the floor carpet that has been sprawled out in my living room. Sometimes, I take those stories and fold them neatly into tiny packets and place them under my sleeping mattress. And then I go about doing my daily chores pretending I have no stories of shame and guilt that lay silently buried under the mattress. And sometimes, I break them into tiny pieces, and drop them one by one on the streets I walk, imagining myself to be Hansel who has lost his Gretel and the broken bits to be bread crumbs. I also hope that the crumbs be eaten by a hungry crow so that those unbearable stories disappear without any trace. But the crows never come. And the stories patiently wait under the bed for me to return.
So, in the Ionely nights, I hear those stories’ husky whispers. Then, I scream loudly begging them to stop. But they never stop. They haunt my dreams and lives. And when the dawn breaks, I go about keeping them unnoticed. They are absolutely humiliated by my indifference. So every night, they return to haunt me.
And I have few other stories that I always carry within me. They are invisible. But they are present around me. But people never notice. And that is convenient. When I walk around laughing and chattering loudly, I have them trailing around me silently. I am conscious of them. But I know they will never get known to others. And so, I hold my head high and take them around with courage.
There are few other stories that I don’t see but others do. Others see through me and they know the stories that I am part of. I never get to see those stories. Those who see them, pity me. Sometimes they are repulsed. Sometimes irritated. And many times surprised. In other few times, they offer love. People do all sorts of things. But I never get to hear those stories. I know there are some stories around me and within me, the plots of which I will never know. I frantically look for them around me to know those thickened plots. I see them scattered all around me. But there are too many stories and too many fragments. It is not an easy jigsaw puzzle that can be solved in this life time. But I never give up on my search.
These stories are not solely mine. These are stories of my mother, my grandmother and great grandmother. Roots of many stories trace back to a forgotten time, probably to a time when the first generation of my family was born.
Those stories I can’t tell people, I share them with that black dog that comes running behind me every night when I return back home late. He comes running wagging his tail. I sit with him in front of the gate of my house and tell him the story. I tell him with high drama, that after a while, he turns and runs back to his home. He is simply not interested. Or perhaps, he thinks I am taking his love for granted. For the love he offers to me, I return it with a heavy and boring story that fails to impress him. He is disappointed with me every night. So, I stopped telling him stories.
Sometimes, when alone at home with my pet dog, I lie on the floor next to her and try telling her stories. Minutes after I start, she just moves away to the comfy corner under the table. She is just not prepared to hear all the drama. She knows the dram queen I am. Her life is filled with enough drama. Every day, she has to struggle through the cinematic rivalry with the street dogs in the neighborhood during her evening walk. That gives her enough dose of drama and she is not interested in the stories of humans that are unnecessarily melodramatic. So, I tell those stories to none.
Depressed and empty, then I run to the dark cinema halls to listen to the fictional stories instead. And in the darkness, amidst the sounds of popcorn crunching and Coke slurping, I let my emotions run wild. Then I return to the bed, under which lay those stories, silently, waiting to haunt me. And I listen to their whispers.

The Gloom of Yesterday

Many times, things go wrong just like that. Not any particular reason. But just like that. Not that your life has exceptionally been in order for this to come as a shock. But the pattern in which it unspools itself is pretty frightening. Anything you touch goes wrong. Just like that. Anything you get into is a blow on your face. Just like that. In those times, you may actually believe that Supreme Power does really exist, even if you are an atheist. Not because you have experienced many magical moments in your life. But the chaos in your life is so overpowering that you are very sure it is not possible without the intervention of any Supreme Power. How else can you reason out such perfectly choreographed messy situations in your life, as though it was a part of a well edited movie with taut screenplay?
And the fact that few people you look up to live far across the oceans does not help. And when the few others you have always relied upon for support are dealing with a lot themselves, you know this only will make it worse for them. So you keep it to yourself. But hope for a tomorrow. A Tomorrow that will bring sunshine. A Tomorrow that will boost your low self-esteem. A Tomorrow that may help you laugh at the chaotic and gloomy Yesterday. A Tomorrow filled with a bit of happiness and a bit of energy. At least, a Tomorrow that is not as gloomy as the Yesterday.

Liberative and Poignant

In a city like Chennai, it is very rare to come across stories with unapologetic portrayals of the lives of oppressed people. But when the play directed by Srijith Sundaram, Molagaa Podi, unfolded on the stage with the mesmerizing performances of its actors, it filled the air with elation as it offered a sense of hope that marked the arrival of a new momentum gathering against oppression. The play, presented by Kattiyakkarai theatre group, is based on a short story by the Dalit writer Bama that celebrates the rebellion against caste oppression through mockery and well-etched humour. Not to forget that Bama’s short stories and novels were the ones to mark a beginning of revolution of sort in the Tamil literature space. The revolution of Bama’s writing is not only in the stories that she tells, but also in the language that she usually employs. Her stories are written in the dialect of the same people whose lives she portrays. This renders tenacious strength to her story-telling. This, I call it a revolution, because the Tamil literature space has always been dominated by many self proclaimed mavericks, who lay emphasis on language rather than on the issue. And to write in a language of oppressed people that lacks the refinement and beauty of chaste Tamil, is definitely a victory that needs to be celebrated as a revolution.

The play that was staged as part of the Chennai Rainbow Pride events at Spaces in Besant Nagar, has elevated Bama’s story to a totally new level through its nuanced narration and portrayal. To those who have already read the story, the play would be an overwhelming experience, as it has brilliantly captured the core essence and the beauty of Bama’s short story. The original dialect of the story, the nuances of which have been handled well in the play, has enriched the overall experience of the audience. The format of narration was interesting, as it gave space for the actors to interact with the audience and in turn kept them engaged throughout. The trivial alteration in the play towards the end from the original story, has only added sheen to the story, as it offered some interesting perspectives to the viewers.

What is it about parai that its sounds make your nerves and cells reverberate with energy, hope, joy and a sense of liberation? The apt use of parai that reverberates along the story at instances of confrontation and resistance, heightened the spirits of viewers. The poignant lyrics of the songs portraying the plight of Dalits also added a definite strength to the story.

Another important aspect about the play, that makes it a class apart, is that many of its actors belong to a community of sexual minorities. Who else could effectively portray the oppression better than the ones who had undergone the agony of exclusion and marginalisation in real life? Oppression may be of different kinds, but the pain inflicted by any discrimination is largely the same. This was clearly evident when the actors portrayed the real emotions with overwhelming genuineness on the stage.

Two thumbs up for Srijith and his team who have delivered a power-packed performance and made the whole experience an enjoyable and insightful one!

Dark Nights and Fanged Teeth

It comes in the night
The past with its fanged teeth
It comes in my dreams
Not the same as I saw them
But in different contexts
Myriads of people and forms
Collage of this and that
Little from here
And a little from there

It comes in my dreams
The past with its fanged teeth
The ten year old boy with a smile
He tells me those buried secrets
They tumble out and lay there
Thumping their feet down
Demanding to look at them

Turning the face, I go back
Closing my eyes, I run
I can escape, I tell myself
But they lay behind me
Taking monstrous shapes
Chasing me till the end

I know I have to face them
Not today, but a day will come
A day from a distant horizon
With its scent of hope
And colour of rage in its periphery
Painted with streaks of love
It would be the day of closure
And a beautiful beginning of new life
Till then, I run

(This is my first attempt to write a poem. Christina, my dearest Akka (Hannah), Sridevi and Aniruddh are the ones who inspired me to pen down some of my thoughts as a poem. And to all of you, pardon me if it is sloppy or reads immature. You know I am bad at poems :))

Typically 'Ko'llywood!

When people, who rejected Vaanam claiming it to be boring and uninteresting, praised Ko for being innovative and packed with interesting moments, I should have known what to expect from the movie. Well not that I do not know what the yuppie Tamil movie goers and the elitist class of Chennai wants in a Kollywood entertainer. My friend and I just took a chance, like many of the stupid and highly risky chances that we have taken before when it comes to Tamil movies.

Well, it was not difficult to predict what kind of a movie that is going to be played on the screen, after the few initial scenes. Silly, contrived and predictable, the movie claims itself to be a political thriller. The movie is an unpalatable concoction of politics, friendship and love. Take a thread of extremely silly Utopian dream with narrow and limited understanding about corruption. Weave the thread with a triangular love story, in which one woman even while she yawns does it with extreme poise and grace, and naturally ends up being the best available choice for the courageous hero. The other woman lacking feminine grace and docility expected out of Tamil women, naturally becomes the sidekick for the hero and the heroine and obviously dies a brutal death because she is not someone cut out for any man (specifically Tamil man with high moral values!) to fall in love with, leave alone the hero. Well, what ending can you expect for a woman of such low morals and unwomanly behaviour in Tamil cinema? Then intersperse it with a pack of highly melodious romantic songs here and there, including the one which the hero and heroine sing unashamedly on the night immediately after the brutal death of her unwomanly best friend, even before she is cremated. Then, pepper it with one or two homophobic dialogues with judicious mix of anti women and politically incorrect jokes such as the ones about commercial sex workers. There, you have a heady mix of an innovative family entertainer that the Tamil audience would just lap up.

The movie could not have done any more injustice to the character of Pia, who has donned the role of ungracious woman. The character of Karthika is cliché’d, confused and fails to impress. Then you have Ajmal and Jiva, with another uninteresting subplot of friends turning foes. Phew! If you have not walked out by then, you would probably want to kill yourself for making you go through such a torture on a Saturday evening.

And if people say that Ko is a box office hit, it would not be surprising. After all, aren’t we talking about the same audience which lapped up Vinnaithandi Varuvaya with such joy and energy!

I Am Who I Am

It is one of those few movies that you would watch crouching in the seat, with your legs folded against your chest, not realizing that you have been crying through out its running length. It is also one of those very few movies that you wish you had watched it alone rather than with a bunch of three other friends in a half empty hall, even if they are the most sensitive and the best people you have ever had in your life, so that you could just cry unashamedly as the characters emerge on the screen to hold you against the things that you have been trying to escape all along! It is definitely one of those few films that tell you stories of people in its raw and unadulterated forms.

Real and on-the-face, I Am Afia Megha Abhimanyu Omar is a string of four short stories that give you glimpses into lives of people who were betrayed, marginalised, abused and oppressed in one way or the other. As the stories slowly unravel life’s brutality and cruelty through its central characters, you know you are seeing the world that you have chosen not to acknowledge so far. But, you know that one day or the other you ought to see the truth and come to terms with it.

I Am Afia, is a story of a woman, played by Nandita Das, who is in search of a sperm donor to have a child without the support of a man in her life. She has decided not to trust a man ever again in her life, after going through the worst betrayal from the man she had been in love with. And she has to put a face to the man who is donating the sperm. Does she get to meet the man? Is she ready for making such a big step in her life? Even though the story in a way tries to enforce the gender stereotype of yearning for motherhood, there is a strong subtext that cannot be missed. The woman’s loss of trust in a man. This is something many Indian women will be able to empathize with.

I Am Megha is a story of a Kashmiri Pundit, Juhi Chawla who had fled away from Kashmir during the religious riots. Religion has not only butchered the lives of the loved ones, but has also brutally severed the beautiful friendship between Megha and her Muslim friend, Rubina, the role of latter played by Manisha Koirala. In this story, you are left with questions. Not just any questions! Questions regarding your fundamental sense of justice and faith! Who is the real victim? The one who ran away or the one who stayed back only due to lack of choice? When does ‘us’ become ‘you’ and ‘me’? You don’t get the answers. You know, the answers do not lie there on the screen but somewhere deep within you. Are you ready to see the realities of life beyond your hatred and bias? Now, go and figure out for yourself!

I Am Abhimanyu, is the story seldom told on the screen with such rawness and realism. The success lies in the subtlety of the story that hits hard on your face. The story may be shocking to many. A victim of sexual abuse by his stepfather in his childhood, Abhimanyu (Sanjay Suri) chooses to get comforted by the incestuous relationship as love. Later, he cleverly chooses it as a tool to exploit the stepfather for his own benefit. His undecipherable dreams in which he is a girl are sequenced beautifully, that you shudder seeing the harshness of the reality. The constant mewing of the nameless cats through out the story, tell you not just his story but the stories of many other Abhimanyus scattered across the world. And when his mother refuses to believe him after the death of his father, he questions her if she never saw anything or she never wanted to see anything all these days? No answer again! You know that this is the same painful silence that many men and women out there in the world would have endured in their lives. And when his girlfriend, Natasha, tells him that they will take good care of his nameless cat, which is the fourth one after the first cat that was killed by his stepfather in a fit of rage and the two other that met with brutal death, you wish someone had hugged you tight together to hold your shattering self from breaking into pieces!

I Am Omar is a story more about Jai (Rahul Bose) than about Omar (Arjun Mathur). This is a story about the cruelty and oppression that people face, just for being different in a world that is obnoxiously homophobic. Being gay in India is not easy. And IPC 377 that was recently read down, had only been making sexually marginalised people’s lives intolerable and miserable. On the night Jai meets Omar (you later realise that Omar is a male commercial sex worker), they flirt with a beauty that only Onir can manage to capture on the screen when dealing with a love affair that is not straight. And they head to a secluded place, only to get caught by a cop who threatens them to arrest if Jai is not willing to part with a huge sum of money. What then unfolds may seem completely unbelievable and shocking to many as what Jai loses that night is more than a sum of fifty thousand rupees. You come to know that these are just everyday realities for scores of people living hidden in the society. It also showcases the hypocrisy of the system and the moral guards of the society. And then you realise that the sense of morality is what is abnormal and not the people. And also you come to know that it is something that has only been invented by the power mongers of the society to nourish their own lives.

Finally, when the screen goes blank after showing you the stories of people that you would have otherwise not known, you are scared that you may find your reflections in the images that you just saw. You also understand that those images may come along with you out of the cinema hall and continue to haunt you for a while. You may be the untrusting Afia, or you may be the cynical Megha, or you may be the abused Abhimanyu, or you may be the marginalised Omar! Or worse you may be one among the others who made these people’s lives a struggle. You may be the husband who betrays Afia. Or you may be the stepfather who had slowly killed the conscience of Abhimanyu. Or you may be the repulsive cop! Or you may be the silent and helpless spectator like the mother of Abhimanyu. Or you may be the caring and loveable Natasha, the girlfriend of Abhimanyu. Or you may be Rubina, equally tormented by the people’s hatred towards other faiths. Or you may be Siddharth who offers a glimmer of hope to Afia in an important decision of her life. Or you may be Abhimanyu as well as Jai. Or you may be Afia as well as Abhimanyu. You could be anyone among those people! Or you may be a random collage of all of these people. You may be someone running away from the past. You may be someone failing to see and acknowledge the people around you.

But this is a movie that will not let you go off the hook easily. This is a movie that will haunt you and compel you to face the truth, realities and harshness of life that you have been trying to evade all these days!