A LETTERED SOUL: REFLECTIONS ON LITERATURE, CINEMA AND CULTURE .

THE BEDAZZLEMENT IN SPACES.

How often is it that our immediate location in which we live and work leaves a lot to the other's imagination and a whole lot to be desired on our own frugal parts? I've come to realize through advanced maturity that we are essentially frugal in spirit as much as we wouldn't admit it and in a predominantly middle class ethical standard of life, there are patterns within our spaces that we take seriously only in hindsight. The surprising part is this commissioning of selective amnesia is a horrendous human mistake as our individual mind, all the while hoping for change, calculates and puts into our personal accounts this pattern of skirting the truth. We calculate and account for every step, every limitless predictable asset that spells out the words 'mundane' and 'routine' down to the most overexhausted word in use: 'normal'. We end up asking, "how much of ourselves is normal in terms of moral accountability?"

The personal space in our lives  then is most commonly referenced for our inward reflections and truths fall out of cracks.  Think of a nosy or overbearing neighbour, the interpersonal fall-outs in a now much-maligned and fringe group of joint families, the discomfort of living in a communal or social backwater, complaining about occupying small plots in an utopia of real estate boom, potential threat in a less than secure/ isolated suburban sprawl or points where too much space in living quarters is a substitute for desolation and fears of bearing any unexpected incidence all alone, cut off from close community. Hence an element of accommodation as regards spaces is too vast to go beyond just the home. It is a state of mind and a location or landmark lodged deep inside. We pay heed to too little or too much when settled in the seemingly secure folds of the hearth and too many unflappable realities are part of the Pandora's box that is the home. Its about civilization, human nature; the personalized patch of ownership and practicality we invested in these spaces. Bedazzlement is thus a loaded term here and in cinema the living space has often become a symbol of crucial inversion. After all, the ideal of our personal space is an extensive myth and truth is stranger than fiction even when it escapes our eyes. On these fronts, cinematic representatives helped me in grasping more nuances of the concept in close concurrence with my own ideas. Our spaces are tracts of secrets and figures of much enigma.
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Dear Maya(2017) has the titular protagonist as a recluse ensconced within a dilapidated mansion in the hills, only to not venture out of it for nearly two decades. This mystifies two spirited young girls who are taken aback by the urban legend attached to her secluded stature and attempt to find out her tale as their destinies intertwine. So a generational difference and exploration of gender to then and now and an unified triptych of individual feminine identity are moot points which I took away from its plot. However, the sequestered confines of the home and the person entrapped within that self-inflicted state of exile caught my attention more. The director of the film had told a popular host that she sought inspiration from a real-life occurrence where a woman who saw the brutalities of the 1982 anti-Sikh riots resorted to confinement for 30 years, the surprising part being that her husband stayed in the home next to her all this while. This rattled my self-consciousness and I wondered about the price that one has to pay for all the vicious cycles of violence we are privy to. Reading about them in itself is a death knell for humanity and witnessing it can only have an unimaginably pronounced effect on the recipient. The eyes witnessing horrors of mankind ultimately are punctuated by the fearful signals emitted by our all-controlling brain cells and this paralyses our sense of self and movement in a life-changing reversal of being. The sense of emotional and mental displacement is permanent. The very act of grieving and shock takes an internalized charge and the home becomes a site of inversion of every normal functioning. The human psyche is pushed to such a brink that it retreats from any contact or communication. The vow of silence then remains the last defiance. Technically, this is called agoraphobia. For me, this representation of a recluse in a ghost-like structure is like a body double of our own fears and the unspoken mime that we engage with is given the spotlight to materialize in depth and coherence. Maya is our body double and kindred;  the volatile world we occupy is the receptacle which turns its melancholic look at our crestfallen soul.