“I suppose at that moment I was also wondering what he really meant by it. After one too many glasses of arrack and soda, he wasn’t really in a sense to explain his discourse behind it. But Rachana, there is some truth that we can really unravel from those two words. The concepts behind those words can tell us what relevance they may have when brought together. I was thinking of it that very night.”
Ah! So it seems Jaliya is going to explore the ‘signified’ of those words, the two ‘signifiers’, and bridge together a meaning for the phrase? Yes, he is exploring means for interpretations. Perhaps he sees a metaphoric sense in those two words though Rachana feels it is an opprobrious incongruity!
“...The ‘pilli’, their form, is neither fully of this world, nor of the original spirit world. It’s a ‘nether worldly’ sort of form. Perhaps cinema is something like that. We don’t touch it Rachana, yet it’s so very truly visible. It’s like a living entity with its images, shapes and sounds. The effect it has on us is very strong. From love, to laughter, to tears and rages. We can feel pain, sadness, and blood chilling horror, and fright... We can be made to feel all of these simply by its presence to our senses. Yet we can’t touch it! ...Its power is such it can drive our senses to its decrees. Decrees that we never hear as explicit orders, but decrees that permeate our skin and lodge in our pulses, and drive us through emotions. Cinema can have that power over us Rachana. Simply because it begins by becoming alive to our sight... And I forgot to tell you another thing. A ‘pilliyak’ cannot affect the blind. It must always be seen by the victim to cast its effect.”
Only if seen does cinema have a form and its effect proper. Yes, Jaliya has a valid hypothesis doesn’t he? And its form is visible yet beyond touch. In a way like the words that pass between these two conversationalists, wouldn’t you say? Though none of these two may hold the other’s words in their finger tips, they grasp them in auditory form, and create images in their minds. But what of these can they touch?
“But a film, a movie, doesn’t kill anyone Jaliya, not literally. Unlike a ‘pilliyak’.” Her contention is steadfast.
Jaliya contemplates on Rachana’s argument. It is true isn’t it? The cinema doesn’t kill anyone.
“But, what if it makes one feel as if his whole identity has been possessed by it and made to feel killed of his identity?”
But what is this? Jaliya can’t surely mean that a person’s ‘identity’, which may be interpreted in different ways, can be the same as the death of the physical person?
“What do you mean?”
“Once I saw in an interview of the Swedish film maker Ingmar Bergman. Bergman says there are very beautiful cathedrals in Europe, the baroque cathedrals, I believe were the ones he was referring to. So, he said that although the cathedrals are so beautiful and have lasted through the ages to be marvelled at, no one knows who built them. Not a single name would ever be found of the people who laid the stones, who carved those intricate details that embellish the ornate structures. He, Bergman, says in that interview, he wished he could have been like those cathedral builders. That he wished he could have remained in anonymity and let his creations endure the ages and successive generations. And to be spared of his identity becoming fixed on his creations and his creations alone. Perhaps he felt his whole world had been presumed through his work, through the ‘cinema of Bergman’. He must have felt he had become a prisoner of his own creations. Generally it is the creation that must be subservient to the creator. But the cinema he created captivated so many millions across countries and generations that he was owned by them, owned through the presumption that Bergman was theirs, theirs through the cinema he created. But in reality he could have been, and possibly like every other artist, much more than what comes through his work alone. The world presumes too much of the artist by acquiring his creations. Such presumptions may make him feel robbed.”
“Robbed?”
“Yes Rachana, robbed of his identity, which may then be interpreted and declared to the world by those who have passionately taken possession of his work. It is a labour of love and devotion perhaps on the part of the world. But then, did they ever ask him? But the anonymous cathedral builder, he, is spared of all that Rachana. While he may take great silent pleasure in the beauty he has helped birth to the world, he is not robbed of his identity as a reward for having bequeathed to the world a monument of beauty. His silence, his facelessness has spared him from it. His labour’s results will continue to marvel the world. And with the countless multitudes he too may gaze upon the beauty of his creations, undisturbed. Perhaps the cinema may take away the identity of people who birth it. It may be another form of killing...Killing the person within, underneath the skin, beneath the laughter and the smiles.”
“But then what is the purpose of cinema?”
She who found it unbearable to even think of going to the cinema hall, to the pictures, even with her childhood sweetheart now believes this noble art of cinema must be better defended. Who cares of what Ingmar Bergman may have said about his craft and his creations having robbed him of his identity? Why should it, she thinks, matter to the world? If the world has been offered it then it is for the receiver to decide what to do with it. Whatever laments the artist may have in retrospect is irrelevant. He should then decide before he bequeaths it to the world that hungers for art, for beauty. Rachana feels cinema, the great art of storytelling, has been done wrong in this discourse between her and Jaliya where he has called it a form of death. The death of the ‘filmmaker’ who may forever be viewed by the world through the pictures he put to motion after looking at the world through a lens.
“Escape...” It is a solemn whisper that leaves his lips to her ears. A wisp of air. An acoustical wisp of air, becoming a ‘signifier’ with a ‘signified’ that opens a new vista.
“..Escape could be the very soul of cinema. It could be the very purpose that it exists for, in our world of mortality.”
“Escape?”
“Yes Rachana, just think of it. Cinema is a form of storytelling, don’t you agree?”
“Of course, and on that you are suggesting that storytelling too is a type of escape?”
“It is. Storytelling has been one of the first forms of escape we developed. Escapism is at the root of storytelling Rachana. In the cinema hall we are taken away into the magic of the light that comes in the form of pictures. It’s a collective ritual of escape where each is a lone escapee. Yet storytelling is the first collective escape humans came up with. For both the listeners and the raconteur. And every time we think back to such a moment, like from our childhood when we sat at the feet of our grandparents being taken away to different times, and places, and people, by their words, we find recourse to that escape once more.”
To remember, to reminisce, is to escape? Rachana wonders if this young man sitting next to her suggests that the past is a land we try to escape to. But then, maybe not. He was referring to storytelling, she reminds herself. Not wishing the past, the past with all its hallowed memories of the joys had in her life, to be transfigured into the likeness of a ‘story’, another mere ‘story’. She assures herself that the past is something more profound and deeply rooted with purpose than a ‘story’. It was not that the treasured moments she has had are now merely for the purpose of being some easy means to shut out the present world temporarily. But then, what is a person’s ‘story’ she wonders. What form does one’s life have when looked back on, in retrospect, when it is given the shape of spoken words? Is that a ‘story’, she wonders.
“Storytelling is a means of escape in more than one way.”
“To forget the world, you mean.”
“But also sometimes just the opposite Rachana.”
“What do you mean?”
“The raconteur can sometimes extend life. That is after all not in want to leave the world, but in the desire to embrace it. Through storytelling, to ward off death.”
“Ward off death? But how is that? W
hat do you mean?”
“Through stories, for generations, people have passed down their knowledge to the generation that will succeed them. It’s one form of extending the life of your knowledge. Stop it from dying out completely. For a person who believes, that in the knowledge deposited in the minds of the living that some sense of him too will live symbolically. That’s like a way of extending your lease of life, in a different way. To live on as a memory.”
“But then that’s metaphorical Jaliya. It doesn’t prevent you from dying.”
“But what if storytelling can prevent death?”
“How?”
“It was storytelling that saved Scheherazade from the executioner each morning.”
“Scheherazade.”
Ah, Scheherazade! Who could forget her? The immortality she has achieved through generations and generations passing civilisations across barren deserts, unconquered mountain terrains and limitless oceans is testimony to how the art of storytelling has been treasured by man. Scheherazade, the daughter of the chief vizier of the King Shahryār, who artfully narrated stories for a thousand and one nights keeping her king in raptures thirsting for more. And of course he would grant her the blessing of life each dawn, delaying her fate. And yes, as Jaliya said, warding off death.
“But Jaliya, to her it was also a means to find a solution to a problem. Her escape at the same time was also a solution.”
The power of storytelling. Has it ever been understood as for one single purpose? But does it even have to, for that matter? Throughout the narrative of human inhabitation of this earth, the ‘story’ has always had its place to interpret the world as man saw it. Through cave paintings to canvases, from oral narratives to ritualistic performances, to stone inscriptions to the ‘printed word’ and finally the art and technology of the moving image, all of these means of ‘communication’ find deep in their threading at least some semblance of that human phenomenon –The story.
“Yes, your right. It was a solution to her. The story itself was always the answer to her. To her problem, it was the existence of the story that assured her another day of life. But over the course of history Rachana, stories have been ways to pass on knowledge and wisdom that offer solutions to problems to people. The panchatantra for example, just think of all those tales that preach a moral teaching. Yet to whomever that kept telling stories like Scheherazade, it was always a form of escape. That I think is what meant the most. To her the very reason for storytelling was for existence. To escape death.”
“And it had two sides to that escape didn’t it?”
“Two sides to it?”
“Yes, Shahryār found his escape, through those stories didn’t he? He could have just gone to sleep that first night when Scheherazade began telling that first story to her sister Dinazade. Although he allowed her that last wish to tell a story he didn’t have to listen to it.”
“What made him listen to that young virgin?”
“His conscience wanted respite, to escape all the burdens it carried. The blood of all those virgins he had put to death one after the other, each having but just one conjugal night...And deeper within him was that inconsolability. The grief of a sincere lover betrayed by his one true love. Yes, Shahryār wanted escape from his cycle of grief and sin. He could not bear to see the world as he saw it. Infidelity was all he saw... But, when Scheherazade began her story...”
When Scheherazade began that first story her king truly did find a solace that he had never found since coming to know of the infidelity committed by his wife. That sin which near doomed Shahryār to a life of misogynistic bloody revenge upon all woman kind within his realm. It was a soothing comfort he found in the words of Scheherazade as she took him to lands and times past, and yet to be. To the adventures of men who defied the laws of science by flying on carpets and commanding at will genies trapped in lamps. Yes, it was that comfort of listening to stories that healed his wounded heart, by shutting out the world. By offering him escape, in certain ways, from himself. For every time we immerse ourselves in the magic of a story and imagine ourselves as one of those larger than life characters, we do in fact find respite from ourselves. Yes, our dear selves.
“...Shahryār found he was being unburdened from the world that waited for him in the morning. He found his escape in her stories Jaliya. The guilt of the deaths of all those virgins whose lives were fated to a conjugality of a single night in the royal bed chamber was on him. Thinking he was Sinbad, he was Aladdin or Ali Baba, Shahryār found in those stories a haven. A refuge from his conscience.”
“And those stories were vessels for him. They transported Shahryār. The words of Scheherazade wove that flying carpet Rachana, and her storytelling gave him his escape, becoming a form of travel.”
Storytelling as a means of ‘travel’. Rachana finds that a very interesting notion. And then, if so, can travel constitute a story? Why yes, of course, she reminds herself of having heard how much travelling influences writers. And how writers nowadays speak of being inspired by their travels. Surely then there is that bond between storytelling and the idea of being transported to another place and time becoming some ‘form of travel’ to the listener? And while she thinks of these things in the privacy of her thoughts, Jaliya is reminded of a four word line that was impressed on him. They were words of Rachana herself –‘I love to travel’.
She loves to travel. And then she wanted me to tell her a story. ‘Jaliya, tell me a story’. And what purposes did you have Rachana? You who said you ‘love to travel’, especially at night.
What ‘purposes’ did she have? Could any of the purposes these two passengers have expounded so far, be sufficient purposes for each of them to indulge in storytelling? Becoming the raconteur then turning listener, and switching roles again? ...Travel and storytelling. The links between these two phenomena as a metaphorical overlapping of one another; is that what Jaliya and Rachana are discoursing? If that is so let’s look at the concept of ‘travel’. As a phenomenon of human doing how does one perceive and interpret travelling? If one looks to dictionary definitions, different volumes by different publishers would not likely word the definition in exactly the same way. But there are some key essentials that would come out as being definitive of the ‘concept’ of ‘travel’ when looking for an understanding of the concept behind the word. The ‘signified’ behind the ‘signifier’. The 10th edition of the Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary elaborates the word ‘travel’, very explicitly defining it within the domain or context of its physical dimensions and aspects concerned. The idea of movement in a given direction, and undergoing a ‘transmission’ from one place to another. With these ideas in mind one may deduce that travel always has a ‘destination’, going by the more scientific, lexical classifications. So, a destination, which one may interpret as being the culmination point of the ‘directional’ aspect, would be essential to define the act of travelling. And then if we think of the idea of ‘movement’, within this same context of defining the definitive elements of the word ‘travel’, it would mean the transmission between two places or points of some object. Now, this object, must surely be a form with an identifiable materiality with materially identifiable dimensions. But yet these materially identifiable parts constituting the formal nature of the object do not have to be static. They may not necessarily be definite in terms of fixedness. No, in the course of the ‘transmission’, change may occur. Yes, travel can cause change, in dramatic and remarkable ways. But then, with all the grounding it has in the aspect of materiality how does storytelling become a form of travel? If we all sit around a campfire engrossed in the narrative of the storyteller, what form of motion do our bodies take? It doesn’t really fit into that classification does it? Seems unlikely to. But what then is affected to undergo some form of ‘motion’, some directional movement? Perhaps though not strictly literal, in a more metaphysical and metaphoric way, the minds that are involved, the minds of the listeners’ as well as the rac
onteur’s, do move along with the images that conjure in their heads when the words take form from being the ‘signifiers’ to the ‘signified’. Something like cinema in a way isn’t it, if you really think about it? Our minds become the screen while the words of the raconteur are like the light beams projected onto the screen. And of course the story unfolds as the images move on that screen, though they may not transform into a form of materiality of tangibility to travel as Jaliya and Rachana who are sitting next to each other. But then, this manner of travel in the form of storytelling does not involve constriction to the dimensions of materiality. It is not a physical transportation but a mental one. A ‘transmission’ not of a material object between two points identified for its physical dimensionality, but beyond the realms and notions of the material. But then, if one might ask in this context, what about speed? Travel does involve speed after all doesn’t it? But even when there is no material objects involved? Ah, but wait! Who can say this phenomenon of storytelling and the consequent travel that occurs is completely and absolutely devoid of all forms of materiality? There is speed involved when we think of the words that string together the narrative. How fast does the narrator speak? What is the time taken for the words to reach from his lips to the ears of the listeners? And how fast can the listener conjure up the image, the ‘signified’ on that screen called the mind? Undoubtedly, in any form of travel, be it within the context of walking, or dreaming, there is that element of speed involved, though a dictionary definition may perhaps not necessarily include it directly with the word. Speed. Yes, without the element of speed, motion would not be possible. Motion must always be defined with the presence of speed. Because to not have any speed of any kind whatsoever would mean being stationary. So, in this context of our story one may ask what is the level of speed that applies to the travel Rachana and Jaliya are engaged in? Where has their bus journey taken them to? Where? As in where along the route are they now? The ‘route’ which is another word for the ‘direction’ the bus moves, or undergoes ‘transmission’, one could say. Well, we may be assured that the relevancies of the route have eluded both Jaliya and Rachana and they would be the last two on earth who would be able to answer that question. Because for one thing, in order to measure where they may be right now, neither knows of the speed that is in force, in terms of the motion of the bus they are in. There is an interesting theorem about speed or the intensity of movement, and how it is linked to ‘memory’ in a novel named Slowness by the Czech born writer Milan Kundera. He believes there is a ‘secret bond’ as he so calls it, between slowness and the power of recollection or memory as he calls it, and in the opposite end of this spectrum is ‘forgetting’ which is bonded to speed, which must be understood in opposition to slowness. To illustrate and substantiate his argument Kundera offers us in Slowness a very mundane incident which is so endearingly true to life in our world of experience. The example he provides is of a man walking along the road whose pace lowers when he attempts to recall something yet finds it eluding him. And the slowing down which happens not so much as a result of conscious effort helps the process of recollection, and finally the man may fully recall to memory what he tried to grasp and afterwards resume his previous pace. Kundera contrasts this with the opposite scenario of a person who hurries his pace, increases his speed, when he has had an unpleasant experience and finds that to increase the level of speed puts the experience more and more into the past, and distances it from him and his present, as the speed increases. It is a form of forgetting or putting the experience which still resides in his recollection vividly into the process of forgetting. Rather true isn’t it? To move further and faster away from a particular place or person which has caused us an unpleasant experience offers some relief, some semblance at least of comfort. Isn’t this movement, the undergoing of a transmission with a directionality, travelling? It most certainly is. And then ‘speed’ here plays a very crucial role. To reduce speed would be to help recollection and to increase it would be to aid forgetting.