Silver Lining
A sliver of sunlight from the kitchen window
I watch Wake Up Sid, once every year. Granted it’s an odd choice for a yearly tradition, but it’s one of those breezy movies which suits almost every mood. Over the last few years, I’ve noticed that different parts of the movie have moved me at different times. When I was a lot younger, Sid’s uber coolness was aspirational and I related to his coming of age arc. Maybe there was a time when Sid and Ayesha’s platonic and then not so platonic love formed the movie’s emotional core for me. Off late, two scenes, in particular, stay with me.
In the first, Sid, still, an estranged son, visits his mother for a brief moment and they sit down and look at a family photo album together. Sid’s mother is still trying to converse in broken English, and Sid still corrects her, but now with less irritation and more adulation. In the second, Sid asks his father why he stopped doing photography and his father reluctantly tells him that he did so because Sid grew up and had no time to be his muse anymore. “For me, photography was clicking your pictures,” he says.
I’ve wondered why the movie plays differently for me. It’s probably just the inevitability of aging, I thought. Growing up has changed the way I engage with myself and the world at large. It’s also radically changed my gaze while consuming any form of art. But, it can’t be just that, right? Why these two scenes specifically? And then it dawned on me; it’s the progression of my relationship with my parents.
For a long time, I’ve been such a huge part of my parents’ world while they hardly formed any part of mine. I felt entitled to their support by virtue of them birthing me. When you think of parenting as a duty, you become blind to the massive emotional and monetary cost that goes into raising a child. Not that I was equipped with the machinery to understand this when I was a kid, but even if I was, I would’ve hardly acknowledged it. Now that I have grown a lot older and accrued a few years of proper adulthood, it's made me see all those years of childhood in a completely different light. I now see my parents with an altogether different gaze.
Little Things, is one of my favorite TV-series and I’ll probably write about it at length in a separate newsletter later. The show primarily focuses on the dynamics of a young, urban couple - Kavya and Dhruv, and in the process unspools all the little things that make up life as a twenty-something. However, two episodes in its third season stand out. In these, Kavya and Dhruv go back to their parents’ home. Dhruv has to help his mother move into a new house and as he packs his entire childhood into boxes, his emotions run high. In one scene, in an unpacking of stuff piled on over some time, Dhruv yells at his mother and accuses her of burdening his life and never giving him good advice. His mother admits with heartbreaking candor - “Even we were learning how to raise a child back then. We did the best we could. Is there anything better than the best? Maybe there is. Maybe we could have done more.”
My mother has wondered about this out loud to me sometimes, in one of those instances when she plays the comparison game that mothers often do. There was probably a part of me earlier that would have nodded in agreement. But, much like Dhruv’s anger stems from self-doubt, this part of me too was born from the intense doubt I had harbored over the choices I had made in life. I now know that my mother’s assessment, and mine, is of course a foolish one. I know that there is something better than the best. My mother had it and she gave it to me.
Kavya’s homecoming is as much about nostalgia as it is about the realization of a simple truth. Her father has just retired after spending decades as a bank employee. In a beautiful scene, Kavya, while on a video call with Dhruv, points the camera towards her father. He is slouched in a chair, away from all the cacophony of his farewell party, staring into the empty ceiling. In that image, his off-handed forgetfulness while making a speech and his pill-boxes, Kavya, who has lived apart from her parents for all her adult life, is made aware that her father has aged. It’s funny that we are so cognizant of growing up, but hardly that aware of our parent’s growing old.
I’ve lived away from home for the last twelve years too and every time I’ve gone back in recent years, I’ve noticed little things that have made me painfully aware of the fact that my parents have aged. I see this in the whites of my dad’s moustache, which I never saw before or never cared to register. I see this in their shortened sleep times. I’ve noticed that the fonts on their phones are tuned up to large and they now wear spectacles more often than not. But more than anything else, I see this in how they fill their days.
I can’t quite put a finger on it, but this time when I returned to Vancouver after visiting home, something had changed. Coming back to Canada after vacation is always accompanied by intense withdrawal and longing. But this time, there was clearly something off. I came back to an isolation pod and spent two jet-lagged weeks in there, dazed and confused. The fortnight was only made easier by the sliver of sunlight through the kitchen window and a video call with my parents in the wee hours of my mornings, where we spoke about bland (vegan) lockdown food, Netflix, and how I fill my days.
Before, I didn’t regularly stay in touch with them. I was particularly averse to video calls for no good reason. But nowadays we frequently chat, over Zoom that too. Our conversations barely moved beyond the mundane facets of life earlier. But, I now find myself opening up to them about subjects I would have never broached in the past, even finding an odd comfort in discussing the weather and my health. So much of this is a matter of age. Some of it is a function of the pandemic and the specific loneliness that comes with it. But, I suspect it’s a bit more than that. For a long time, I’ve been a huge part of their world. And they’ve always been a huge part of mine. I just had to open the door and pick up the damned phone. And I did. This was the pandemic year's silver lining for me. What was yours?
Here are some recommendations -
Do yourself a favor and watch Soul, Pixar’s big 2020 release. It’s profound without being pretentious, gorgeous without being gaudy, and funny without being frivolous. A 5-minute sequence in the movie quite literally took my breath away and the rest of the movie made me laugh and ponder in equal measure. Among the Oscar hopefuls, I absolutely loved the sparse beauty and bleakness of Nomadland. If it wins, it will probably be the most unique movie to do so in a long time.
Longreads - Stories About My Brother - I can’t fathom how difficult this piece would have been for the author to write but I read it and marveled at its clarity and honesty. Fantastic Beasts and How to Rank Them - I can’t effectively summarise what this piece is about because it is about a lot of things, but all I can say is that it’s whimsical, brilliant, and a great way to spend twenty minutes.
I recently found out that George Orwell was born in Motihari, Bihar, and thought that I should read Animal Farm to commemorate this factoid. I did and I can’t get over how great it is. Three Tigers, One Mountain by Micheal Booth is a riveting travelogue through Korea, Japan, and China and also an examination of their shared, complicated history and socio-political relationship.
In Last Chance U: Basketball on Netflix, a camera crew follows the basketball season of a community college in Los Angeles. It brilliantly captures multiple facets of American life and higher education when it’s not busy showing awesome basketball drama and high sport.
I love a good, long rambling conversation as much as anyone. A recent Seen and the Unseen podcast episode has Annie Zaidi, writer extraordinaire having a freewheeling chat with Amit Verma, podcaster extraordinaire. If you do end up watching Soul, enjoy this incredible piece of music from its OST - Epiphany by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. I’ve also been listening to Endless by Mark Eliyahu and The Nightwalker by Marion, on loop.
This poem by Jane Hirshfeld is quite lovely. I think it is the second time a poem of hers has been featured in this space.
Da Capo
By Jane Hirshfield
Take the used-up heart like a pebble
and throw it far out.
Soon there is nothing left.
Soon the last ripple exhausts itself
in the weeds.
Returning home, slice carrots, onions, celery.
Glaze them in oil before adding
the lentils, water, and herbs.
Then the roasted chestnuts, a little pepper, the salt.
Finish with goat cheese and parsley. Eat.
You may do this, I tell you, it is permitted.
Begin again the story of your life.
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I instantly replied to dad's pending whatsapp chat notification and video called them after reading this!