Saturday, October 4, 2008

multiple invisibilities

'..Ayna-e amar mukh, du aanar udgrib saloon-e...
Ayna-e ama r mukh - koroti porjonto dekha jae...'

Having a hircut in a "salon" (earlier i used to fit myself in the Italian arrangment, if you know whta i mean) is one of the most organically motivating and insecured experiences of life. The man with a sharp tool, a man who's name is hardly known to you, a man who's skills are hardly heard of, a man who is hardly among our known faces - is just caressing your outgrowths to shape, to make you look good. i mean, what gives you all your heart's support and reckoning that the man can take care of your head and skin and hair and blood and flesh to smooothen you to almost that is close to image perfect ??? He touches you, caress through the narrow valleys and allies of the corners of your face and shoulder to do the job.

Another imperative of a "salon" is its frightening aspect of the mirror images. It's a room with a view - a view with the climax of Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon - where you find multiple unknown mid close shots of a familiar body but with different souls. One is busy entangling it's shoulder, another is only visible from the rear and a few is only visible on a profile with a split-face effect. You can never catch them in their entirety. All the images are brittle, they lack consistency in their approach, they are loosely joined only by coincidence. And i wonder why.
I feel my invisibility is multiplied.
i feel you are not there to tell me what's going on.
i feel you are not there.

6 comments:

rachita said...

There are some people whom we call gifted.. we call some people special..
then we describe some people as kind or loving or generous or all that stuff they are made of...
but in the jargon of today they are just merely "spinoffs", they are just 'playing it safe'.

Your uniqueness lies in your simplicity...

you are as simple and mysterious as a spiders web and as ordinary as a spiral sea shell.

your mere state-of-fact observations are so nearly right... and as time goes by they become more and more right...

please keep writing
and keep inspirin...

the world seems more REAL when i see it and feel it though your eyes.. and read it through your words...
really..

gamchawalla said...

let not split hairs, you are scared!! lol..and honestly, i dont blame you..happens to all of us..no probs with your split personality and/or myopia, whichever comes first! the main thing is..are you looking it in the eye? are you asking or accepting? are you taking a step? when we exist so much in the outside world, so much as to clothe ourselves with a constant flow of existentialist vestments, can we dare ask? its a assertion of a kind of raison d'etre which we imbibe from our milieu but concurrently, negate a part of ourselves where the 'etre' resides! lol..almost a paradox...
anyway..lovely read..keep it coming..and steer carefully! best of luck..

onnesha said...

i have a word for it.INTIMIDATING.happens all the time with me.the mirrors,the scissors,the grave face,the cold efficient hands,and the relentless snips,et al.

Riya Das said...

thnx for visiting my blog. and good luck with yours. keep writing.

sometimes the mirrors help..but at times its best to look straight at an object rather than at its reflection.

ananya chatterjee said...

lucid humor.... i enjoyed it

Indrajit Dutta said...

Man you've zoomed in on a scruffy aspect of life in a neat manner.I dig all the lines but the line about mid close shots is smashin.