Eye of the Beholder: Part 1

Hello Readers,

It has been a while since I posted something on my blog.
This summer I have decided to give attention to my writing. For that reason, I am starting off with a series that is based on my experience during a project trip in Dharavi. 

It is a series of 6 images that will be distributed across 3 posts.
Hope you like them!

IMAGE 1:

Open. Snap. Click. Edit. Upload.

You see the aesthetic value of it. You see the natural beauty in it. You see the outer appearance, get mesmerized by it and continue to gawk. One who has clicked it, to a certain extent, knows the backdrop behind it; one who views it, generally, scrolls along.

There is no time to wait and know more;
No time to understand the meaning.

In this fast paced life where knowing the meaning is the essence of life, why don’t we stop and stare?
Inquire and develop your wealth.
See beyond the sight.

Go explore and discover that these flames are not to keep one warm but to use the heat to weld something that fills their stomach.
The huge sacks are not for a storehouse purpose but to produce a raw commodity.
The drum of water is not to quench their thirst but to sprinkle in the effort to allow them to survive.

Go beyond the beauty and see that the amalgamation does not equate to beauty but to turmoil and hard-work.
Venture in your mind to conclude that not only does it result in a good click but to conception of the system of pottery.

Delve and understand that the labour and pain are not always fruitful.
Observe the fluctuation in their lifestyle and its dimensions as it has its foundation in the uncertainty of life.
Even in the familiar system that has existed throughout their lives, look at the nuances of unfamiliarity that exist subtly.

Make an effort to look beyond what meets the eye.
Make an effort to explore the unknown.
Widen your perspective.

IMAGE 2:

Orange. Blue. Green.

Those three colours fall off the picture, attracting the viewer to them giving a sense of aesthetic.
But is that all you can see? Not to sound condescending but is only that your focus? It the view so myopic?

Why do you see only the colours? Why are the faded background and the cracks on the brick walls not attractive?
Why is the artificial the attraction and the natural the ignored?
Why has the value of the human labour been shadowed by the value of the product?

Look at their drudgery in derogatory conditions.
Observe the lack of protection and the exposure to the toxic that envelops them.
Correlate their conditions to their compensation and see the unfairness of their position.
Hear their acceptance of their conditions and how they have adapted themselves.
Learn about their migration and how they hold matter for diaspora literature.

Assimilate that something that is harmful is causal to their survival.
Absorb that a colour of the object determines the colour in their life.

Hear the quietness.
Broaden your horizon.
Explore beyond the limits.

Gone Girl..

*Tring*. A pause for 15 seconds.
No response.

*Tring, tring*. Another pause for 45 seconds.
Yet no response.

Finally, the mother dug through her bag and produced the keys from under a pile of cosmetic products, a huge wallet and other items of hygienic importance. She inserted the key in the keyhole and found the door locked twice.

That was unusual, the door was never locked twice unless the family was out. She keyed the second door after the main entrance gate and found that locked twice too. Again, it was unusual.
Grabbing the small hand of her 8 year old daughter and engulfing it in the warmth of her own, she carried a small gift from her mother and entered the dark house.

Well, if the doors weren’t an indication enough, the lights confirmed the obvious; there was nobody at home.

When she felt her daughter loosening her hand from her hold she told her, “Don’t switch on the light of your room before the kitchen ones, sweetie.”

Her daughter nodded in the dark which went unnoticed by the mother and the daughter went ahead to obey the instructions given to her. The mother was swimming in the pool of her own thoughts, wondering why the house was empty on a Sunday night at 10.30 pm. However, she dismissed them and went ahead to the kitchen.

There, she clicked the switch on and found everything to be normal. She looked at the small temple in the room, bowed her head and silently prayed for the prosperity and safety of the family. The minute she turned on her heels to head to her room, she saw the door of the last cabinet of the right platform of the kitchen protruding out. Couple of weeks back, the door had been unhooked off its hinges and there was always a difficulty in closing it after it had been opened. They stored their glass crockery in that cabinet, the most expensive ones. 

“Oh lord, this messy person. He just can’t stop reorganizing things to get rid of his boredom”, she thought.
She went towards the cabinet, opened it and found it empty. Since she was familiar with his habit of shifting things, she did not pay much attention to it, adjusted the door and walked away to the main room.

Another indication –neglected.

She then moved on to place her and their daughter’s shoes in the shoe cabinet. When she opened the door, she found a section empty. But she couldn't place what was absent in that cabinet. She had always had a low sense of observation and did not have sufficient amount of patience to absorb the details. 

So, she placed the shoes on the rack, checked in on her daughter and quickly headed to the washroom to attend to nature's call. 

Another sign –unattended. 

When she entered the washroom, she found the products haphazardly scattered around. It was odd that the product stand was in a mess. But she just rearranged them well and did not pay attention to the lack of products in the tray.

A cue –unidentified.

When she came out of the washroom having attended to her needs, she went ahead to switch on the lights to her room to change into comfortable clothes for the night.

And the minute the lights of the room came on, darkness enveloped her in his blanket.

From the other room, the daughter shouted, “Mom, I am hungry. Can you cook something for me?”
No response.
A pause for 10 seconds.

Impatiently the daughter called out again, “Mom!!”
No response yet again.

Her grumbling stomach made her utter her final cry, “MOMMM! I IS HUNGRY”.

The daughter knew she may have annoyed her mother by now but silence was not what she had hoped to be the response to her restlessness; an angrier, annoyed remark of her mother was what she was fearing. She timidly approached their room, afraid of the consequences of her screaming fit. The daughter wasn’t looking and hence did not expect that she would crash into the rigid body of her mother.

“Mom?” she said a concerned voice. The daughter had yet to notice her surroundings.
She went ahead and grabbed the mother’s hand to gain her attention, but the warmth from her palm that always felt like mild sunshine was not what greeted her. Instead, a chilled, icy feeling welcomed her sending a shock down her spine.

The daughter looked around and absorbed her environment but could barely understand the situation. The only thing she could understand was the light in the eyes of her mother was slowly dimming away and that her cheeks were losing all color, turning pale.

Their daughter’s father’s cupboards were open and it was completely empty just the way her heart felt at the moment after her witnessing this sight.
The clothes, accessories, documents, all gone just like the faith she had in their relationship till now.
Everything else that was unnecessary was laying on the ground like the trust that she had in his love for her.

He was gone.
Her husband, gone.
Her everything, gone.

He had abandoned her and their daughter.

Their young daughter tried to assimilate the context but failed. She was utterly confused and could not form coherent sentences to ask her mother about what was happening. The daughter wandered to her own room leaving her mother standing there, consumed in her own thoughts.

  

Moments turned to minutes which molded into an hour when finally, a pang of pain shot through her body and finally realization and acceptance hit her like a wave. It swallowed her and she lost her bearing causing an agonizing cry to leave her throat. She clutched at her heart and collapsed on her shadow hoping that it would catch her as it had been her constant companion from the beginning.

Hearing the cry, the daughter ran to her parents' room and saw her mother cowering away in a corner where the light from the room reached the least. Unable to decode the reason behind her mother’s reaction and having no idea how to console her mother, to stop her tears, she walked slowly to her.

Wrapping her tiny arms around her mother, she tried to emit some warmth to her and provide her protection from the cold tendrils of the darkness and shadow that she did not know had wrapped around the heart of her mother. 

But the mother was too numb to feel any comfort, too detached too soon to feel anyone’s presence. The bullet of his betrayal had shot her right in the chest and her hopes of a family, hopes of a strong familial bond had been trampled upon by him.

She had accepted weeks back that they were going through a rough time, however a step so drastic was something she had never anticipated or imagined. She believed that they could work their way through, achieve the dream that she had decorated in her mind.
However, at the end she and her daughter, sat wrapped in each other, in that corner where they tried to find solace.

Only silence, sheathed them.
Only silence, was their condolence. 

Life – an undefined fairy-tale

When asked to several persons the question “What is life?” I came upon mainstream answers like “It is what is lived to the fullest” or “life is love” and so on. 

It is a pre-defined ideology that girls are the ones who desperately seek for a happy ending. Well, let me tell you it is just not confined to them. Everyone in their deepest corner looks for “he/she/they lived happily ever after.” This may seem off the topic but this is one of the aspects which help me to build my point.

When I was asked the same question I could not answer it easily. I am only 16 years young. My life till now has been revolving in the realms of the primary and secondary school; and I still have a few more years till I may actually cross the boundaries of my bubble and have a 360 degree turn of my perspective. Coming back to the topic, I pondered on the question and this thought came to my mind, our life is a fairy-tale, an undefined one.

Everyone may think that the journey of our life from birth to death may consist of thorns and cross-roads and then a happily ever after but that is not how it exists. When you least expect it, life throws at you another curve ball. 

Life is not about discovering romance or eternal solitude and peace. It is a mixture of horror, mystery, humor, love, passion and heaven knows what other cues.

One of the aspects of life like it has been said by Santa in ‘Rise of the Guardians’ is finding your center. Your center is the one that helps define your life. It is what your life revolves around and what helps you to mold yourself into what you may become in the future.
We do not know what will happen in our future and neither can we predict it. There would be no thrill to our lives if we know when, where and how our journey will end. The thrill and excitement of the suspense is what keeps most of us going.

Life is a fairy-tale because you have a touch of magic, hope, faith, desire, beauty and charm, hearts and flowers but at the same time misunderstanding, deception, betrayal, suspense, drama and so forth.

Life is a fairy-tale because people enter and depart, they help you mold yourself or you end up molding them, they destroy you or you destroy them.
But, life is an undefined fairy-tale because it is unpredictable. Our lives are not stories that have been written by some authors. We are the creators, the developers of this mysterious journey.
Life is an undefined fairy-tale because we are the protagonist, the antagonist, the trees and the animals, the fools and everything that makes a story.
Life is an undefined fairy-tale because we know how fairy-tales end. But not everyone’s life has the same ending. There is no definition to how our lives may end or a norm of how it should end.
Life is an undefined fairy-tale because we don’t know what will happen in the future. Our creation and imagination is what defines ourselves and sets our destination. Our destiny is not pre-defined as people say, we create it ourselves.

Lastly, life is an undefined fairy-tale because defining it would just be too monotonous and purposeless.