My mother used to tell me stories from her childhood, how she and her mom, my Grandma, used to play together. Grandma would pretend to be a uber rich mysterious woman staying in some fancy place. My mum would pretend to be a servant with a British accent (Butler, she told me) and they'd play house. Pretending to be from a rich aristocratic family. "Here's your tea Madame, fresh and focused, with just a hint of ginger. The way you like it." The butler would proclaim. "Oh how very well, thank you Roberta, this is absolutely wonderful" grandma would reply. It was a happy little family, in a happy little world, far away in time. I was thinking of this story today, thinking about the turbulent times, the year, the pandemic, the wars, the all around tragedies unfolding in front of us. Write a letter to loneliness, I've been told. And it's one hour before submission and now I've been thinking about this for some time now, about half a month, since t...
My mother used to tell me stories from her childhood, how she and her mom, my Grandma, used to play together. Grandma would pretend to be a uber rich mysterious woman staying in some fancy place. My mum would pretend to be a servant with a British accent (Butler, she told me) and they'd play house. Pretending to be from a rich aristocratic family.
"Here's your tea Madame, fresh and focused, with just a hint of ginger. The way you like it." The butler would proclaim.
"Oh how very well, thank you Roberta, this is absolutely wonderful" grandma would reply.
It was a happy little family, in a happy little world, far away in time. I was thinking of this story today, thinking about the turbulent times, the year, the pandemic, the wars, the all around tragedies unfolding in front of us.
Write a letter to loneliness, I've been told. And it's one hour before submission and now I've been thinking about this for some time now, about half a month, since the death of one of our film industry's leading actors, Sushant Singh Rajput. And I thought about it yesterday, when my grandmother died. When Sushant died, you, loneliness, was the de-facto culprit. But I don't blame you, see what we do is we love to play blame games, blaming other people, blaming the circumstances, blaming the luck, blaming the time. Rarely do we look beyond, rarely do we blame ourselves. When Sushant died, people pounced upon the bollywood industry like a pack of wolves, starved, chancing upon a helpless prey. People tore down the celebrities, supposedly (truly, I'd assume) the pillars of nepotism in an industry so infested with acts and facades, that rivals the best of soap operas. People tore down the flag-bearer of nepotism, they blamed everyone. For excluding Sushant, for not giving him support. Loneliness, you met him. When people left, they left him with you.
My grandma died yesterday. A peaceful death but death nonetheless. And my mother, who had already lost her father at a young age, who already had to deal with the two men in her life who rarely spoke, me and my father. My mother got afraid, my mother cried. Still crying. And it brought me back to reality. We as a society, as individuals, have been privileged beyond a belief. Our decision to not speak is our privilege. Our decision to pursue our own lives, Independent of anyone's, is our privilege. We live in a bubble of our perceptions, and the bubble prevents us from seeing things outside our perspective. We fail to see the people who suffer silently, we have lost the ability to read faces, to understand words. I made a vow to myself, to not sit silently. The world needs people to stick together and the only way we can do that is if we speak out. If we talk. There were guests in my house yesterday. My mother was crying and they were consoling her.
I made tea for everyone. "Here's your tea Madame, freshly brewed and focused, with just a hint of ginger. The way you like it" I said. She didn't reply. I had not expected her to. But she managed to smile.
It was enough.