or “Kiske baap ne bola tha?” – is the thought that goes round and round in my head, while I try to shatter the stone steps with my persistent gaze, walking, walking, walking.
My father asked my ex-husband the first time he met him, “So yes, you are an actor, but what do you do?” The most supportive parents then did not tell their children, “Hey, why don’t you go into films, where you may or may not succeed, and where you won’t have any guaranteed income?” I don’t know if it’s much different now.
No one on the trek seemed happy. There were those who were fitter, most people carried their own backpacks and strode off quickly past us, oblivious of up or down. There were people doing the trek in 3 days, 5 days, 6 days, 7. We had a guide and a porter carrying our main luggage, and we did the trek in the stipulated 9 days, and I’d have been happier doing it in 10, or as I counted one day, 20 would have been just perfect.
These super human beings weren’t huffing or puffing like me but they too were tired. And I used to think, “What is this trekking? I mean, why are we going where we are? Why do we have to reach there?”
There’s something so self-indulgent about trekking through the mountains, believing you are doing something worthwhile. Perhaps it’s a way of showing yourself how vigorous you are, perhaps it’s a way of proving you are hardy and tough despite your soft middle-class existence.
Of course, you can pacify yourself by thinking about the jobs you are creating – the guides, the porters, the pack mules carrying your cheeses and pizza breads and soft drinks to the guest houses, the men carrying the wooden logs to renovate the guest houses, the construction workers crushing big boulders to make more steps for your convenience, the guest house owners, the chefs, the cleaners.
For some time now, this one year, everything has seemed a little pointless. Watching films, writing about them, writing films, reading – all of it consumed by the inactivity imposed by a market we don’t understand. To be honest, it’s not the market that has changed, but we have, wondering why, why, why are we doing this?
We could have been doctors, nurses, social workers, teachers, political leaders, shopkeepers, accountants, engineers, inventors. But films, what the hell are films, why do we want to make them, and why do we get so frustrated when we can’t?
I think why Kurosawa’s autobiography made me happy was that it sparkled with such an old-world passion for learning, learning, learning. As if there could never be an end to the things you would like to know. This is not to say that such passion is missing these days, but there is certainly an ease which comes with googling that kills the burning desire to know things out of your finger’s reach.
The book reminded me of our days at FTII, when we were all steeped in film, working so, so hard. Well, at least the women did, the men seemed to drink way too much and fumbled their way into class most mornings. But we were all so sincere, emotions ran high, we got into so many fights with each other and our staff about how we wanted to do things, we were devastated by not being able to execute what we had imagined.
It’s been a while since I got all shiny-eyed at the thought of learning something new apart from yoga. ‘Something Like an Autobiography’ made me tingle up all over again. The trek did too, those long hours of walking seem so pointless, but at the end you are standing between 360 degrees of snow clad peaks towering above you.
What is your net worth, you think, when you are into the film making business. The profit and loss charts, the films you haven’t made in the last 16 years since you were out of FTII all loom before you, and you begin to believe that anything you do is worthless. What is your net worth, you think, as you look at the sun glistening on Annapurna and Machchapuchhare, Hiunchuli and Gangapurna and you realize, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter.
What matters is that moment you are standing there. And Kurosawa made me feel the same. What matters is the enormous fun you have learning, thinking about films, coming up with ideas, consumed by ideas, who cares if you ever make those films or not, who cares what the market thinks anyway?
As an aside, my instincts about a marketing man I met a couple of years ago proved right. He thought books and films could be written with marketing blueprints in mind. He had a lot of money but he made me sick in my stomach. I never went back with the proposal he wanted me to write. And recently, the things I learnt about him proved that my instincts were right.
Oh yes.
I risked what I had to do,
therefore to prove
that we love each other
while my very bones sweated
that I could not cry to you
in the act.
Of asphodel, that greeny flower,
I come, my sweet,
to sing to you!
My heart rouses
thinking to bring you news
of something
that concerns you
and concerns many men. Look at
what passes for the new.
You will not find it there but in
despised poems.
It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.
Hear me out
for I too am concerned
and every man
who wants to die at peace in his bed
besides.
William Carlos Williams. From ‘Asphodel, That GreenyFlower’.
(If you needed a reason, after staring at all those mountains that will outlast every film ever made, for why you make films. The earth and we occupy two different time scales and we must live by ours.)
Thanks, Space Bar, for sharing this poem, your response.
Pictures soon? 🙂 Welcome home! It’s all about the little things, really. The bigger things we waste far too much time worrying about…
Yes, definitely, pictures coming up soon, Memsaab.
360 degrees of snow capped mountains around you, kurosawa, and the films you have been plotting in your mind- i am shiny eyed now.
Surabhi, 🙂 You are so shiny-eyed anyway.
How right you are!
It doesn’t matter at all. All the things surrounding you and everythign one thinks is important. They don’t matter at all. Isn’t the moment when one realise this such a sparkling moment?
That is why I like to go on treks. Sort of meditation in motion. One thinks, thinks, thinks and then, floooop….. suddenly, no thoughts!
I like that, harvey, meditation in motion. I wish I’d been able to meditate more though, I was so scared about slipping. 🙂
‘yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there’.
Such an awesome poem, such a fabulous post.
Feeding the soul, that’s what your trip was!
Thanks, Dipali. The poem, courtesy Space Bar, IS awesome, ain’t it?
wow. and i thought i was so alone in feeling depressed and aimless this last one year. one thing is very clear to me, though. money and security help in buying the groceries and filing up the day. however, it is only emptiness that can , if it is faced without hysteria, give birth to the muse.
this might seem like a tangential reply to ur post, Banno, but it aint, it aint.
No, it’s not a tangential reply. Only very difficult to face emptiness without hysteria, specially when the emptiness seems to go on forever. But you are right, of course.