Womanly Tales

When compared against most other living things, humans are very poor at remembering. As far as evolution is concerned, this is perhaps why we perceive ourselves as at the very top.
So far what we know of evolution is akin to the slow, initial climb on a rollercoaster ride that takes you up to the highest point. Remember how the ride slows down as you reach the top, pausing ever so delicately while inside your body you felt anything but still. The build up of sheer terror masked by false excitement and something more natural – a sense of inevitability…..is then simultaneously released as you and your co-passenger fall, down, up, down some more until you finally meet the ground again.
We are at that pinnacle as far as the evolution of Earth goes in my mind. The single most debilitating quality that will ensure that we hurl ourselves downwards is our memory or lack of.
Nature teaches us about cycles and rhythms. A cycle begins and ends at the same spot. Inevitability is about recognizing that what begins will end and what ends will begin again. No two cycles are identical however rhythms are mostly the same. A rhythm [our dna is an example] is certain combination of cause and effect that when mixed in with other rhythms determine the length of a cycle.
Our evolution is often misconstrued as a linear path – we fail to remember that there is no such thing as a straight line in nature. Just as we recognize all the things that qualify evolution, we fail to remember all the things that construe de-evolution. Our poorly developed faculty of memory is proof that we are de-evolving and that this cycle too must end. What is inevitable is the fact that as we’ve evolved from the big bang, we will also de-evolve to that single particle over the course of time.
This isn’t a depressive post or a pessimistic point of view – I am not trying to paint a picture of doom or gloom. I am sitting right now on a terrace, bathed in morning sun rays with a vista of rolling greens, the sound of chirping birds delighting at the advent of spring.
Deepan and I are in Bath, a historic city in the south-west of England.
The irony of it all, including the message of this post is that we’re on a ‘break’ from the reality of our lives and the realization that we’re living our lives out in these breaks.
I am a big fan of nature (who isn’t?). My happiest times are spent walking in the woods or by a canal or across fields. Nature is precious and I don’t over-indulge. Nature is my teacher and my mother for I feel like a child, open and receptive, and have a strong, pulsating sense of belonging.
This break, my lessons have been both slow to dawn and more difficult to digest. And yet like a careful spring pruning exercise, it’s a must to ensure the garden that is in your mind is fertile and headed for a spendid harvest. Hope is spring eternal. [That last line is really all I can muster up to offer up to Shakespeare and the many writers post him as I wish upon their collective muse].
As a child and adult I’ve been aware of my ability to remember. Rote-learning is an intrinsic part of learning – be it math tables [12X2=24; 12X3=36] or reciting shlokas [Shuklambaradaram Vishnum shashivarnam chaturbhujam...]. I’ve been often proud of my ability to by-heart until a health condition began to ferociously eat away those precious memory cells. I realize now however that even at my peak, I wasn’t all that good for I was trying to remember things that had an awful short history – typically months or in some cases perhaps years and never would it ever exceed my current age. How limiting is that, I ask you. How insignificant a faculty, indeed.
Be it as insignificant, we still are managing to lose it as the years progress further. And it isn’t just about those math tables or spiritual poems — this faculty permeates every part of our life. For example – look at the growing intolerance between generations. Children have little or not time for their parents and even less for their grandparents. Our short-sighted squint at what we perceive as our ‘future’ is a suicide wish – but not one of us will own up to it.
History continues to be the most boring subject in schools and universaties – bar those few individuals who manage to be ‘different’. Our understanding of history is quantified in small doses with some other faculty in our minds that ferociously distills the ‘excess’ and keeps us ‘informed’ with the bare minimum. The bare minimum are essentially trigger words — For eg, my trigger words for evolution of mankind is Darwin and Homo sapien. When asked about anything more, I can actually hear my mind groan as it tries to piece together that understanding.
What’s worse is our ability to remember our collective memory and collective history — the history of how we live and engage with one another. My trigger word for Delhi is Delhi. When pushed further, I come up with lal kila, mughals and rashtrapati bhavan. Our myopic obsession with the present and the immediate has all but completely desensitivized our experience of the past.
Coming to a historic city like Bath begs the chance to engage with our collective history and yet very few people are genuinely excited about it. The Tourist information brochure on ‘What to see’ highlights ten things and most people use it as a checklist. Roman baths, check. Bath abbey, check. Victoria Art Gallery, check.
I am like the general folk who can appreciate the ‘social’ value of being appreciative of historic cities but don’t really appreciate it for what it tells me about myself. Coming to Bath for me was all about getting to Cotswold Way – a national trail that can be covered in a week if done exclusively. My 10 things to see list was on day one reduced to 4-5 must-sees that hopefully could be completed in the morning of day one leaving me with all of day 2, 3, and 4 to get to the Cotswold way.
As is the case with best laid plans [and mine certainly wasn't best laid] it’s day 3 and we haven’t ventured out to Cotswold way yet and perhaps won’t on this trip.
Instead we’ve been drawn into this city and are slowly savouring the many layers of collective history it represents. The redeeming good news is that given a half chance I do get over my initial, awkward reticense towards things historic and do hugely appreciate our collective history [I'd feel sorry the day I don't] – be it in a mirror used by Queen Anne that dates back to the 1760 or to what seems an inconsequential but quirky design of the legs of a footstool. Some of these experiences [like the Roman Baths] now seem both luxurious and terribly instructive. My skin tingles with excitement as I think about what it meant to ‘go’ to the Roman Bath and how paltry & isolative our ‘modern’ equivalents seem in comparison.
However the cycle is constantly moving forward – No where was this more evident than at the Victoria art gallery where the sweep of art work from the early 1800s to modern day work culminates with an exhibition by Edwina Bridgeman that fortells the brittle vulnerability of the future ironically titled ‘Shelter’. The works displayed are brilliantly creative and addressed towards children [or the child in you] – and have a poetic quality to them that manage to be both reassuring and alarming at the same time.
It is through art that we can perhaps begin to remember. And in order to do this we will need to deconstruct our current ‘realities’ – those 9to5 factories that trade in our sweat for a shortsighted future of isolation. This isolation lies in the daily disconnect from nature – its symptom is our insignificant faculty to remember.
How can we expect to experience the rhythms of living in these boxed, dark cubicles of performance management?
What’s at stake is not our ability to put food on the table or a roof over our heads — what’s at stake is something far more precious, that of our human spirit.