“My brother forced my pen to move.”
That’s what Sandhya Mridul, a Hindi cinema and TV artist, says about the motivation behind her debut book of poetry. Mridul recently lost her brother, and Untamed is her stated way of processing that loss. A public ritualisation of a private emotion.
But how does one align individual grief and a sense of loss in a world that is increasingly resembling a catastrophic finale of a fantasy film? Is there a thing about ongoing conflicts—larger than life and distant—that strips an individual of their ability to grieve along the expected lines? Mridul’s case is an example of how the worlds of creativity and conflict collide in a moment of loss.
Grief And Memory
Unapologetic vulnerability is an unexpected outcome of relentless pain. Whether it is the loss of a loved one or a long-drawn armed conflict, those who grieve, often, also understand the importance of keeping the memory alive. The acts of remembering and forgetting are both political and personal. What part of the past is remembered and how it is remembered in the present has consequences, deliberate or unintended, for the future. This selection process is also the basis of almost all creative processes.
Whether it is the Greek or Indic epic poetry, the marsiya of the Shiite religious poetic tradition, or the sombre poetry of lost love in cinema, the commemorative act links the past with the future. By memorialising personal grief, a private individual becomes a historian. And these microhistories become the fodder for the larger project of community or national histories. As Amitav Ghosh suggested in The Shadow Lines, personal memories fill the gaps in official histories. But what about those personal memories that do not intersect with any grander project? And what about those personal historians who do not fit into any of the categories Nietzsche conceptualised: academic, monumentalist, or critic?
When public figures, like Mridul, talk about personal grief and redemption, it is often seen as an extension of their worldly persona, more so in this heyday of social media. Mridul’s distance from the incessant demands of the celebrity world allows her more elbow space than many of her peers. Or perhaps it is this insistence on elbow space that keeps a lot away from her. “I have paid a price for being respectful towards myself, but this is something who I am and cannot change.” By not allowing their ‘true’ self to be subjugated by the market mandates, artistes like her create space for their vulnerability. The freedom to be themselves in joy and sadness without any PR mediation. “What you see is what you get,” Mridul shares about her social media personality. She also says that this book of poetry, right from its title, is all unmediated, untamed version of her.
The Market Of Vulnerability
Creative industries fetishise vulnerability to the point that it either causes fatigue or becomes suspect. The latter scenario is more damaging than the former. Vulnerability as a prop for the powerful disempowers the real vulnerable even further. This fetishisation is not limited to the glamour industry. Vulnerability sells. It also chips at one’s authenticity.
Mridul came out on social media to share her experience with sexual harassment in the Indian film industry in 2018. She shares how a large number of women reached out to her to share their experiences because they felt emboldened by her act of speaking up. This, too, becomes heady: the high of being seen as a trailblazer, the brave one. “That’s one of the reasons I didn’t want to do interviews during the #MeToo wave.”
When there are these many landmines to navigate in the process of dealing with personal grief and loss, how does one even get to the larger political struggles and ramifications? Does the answer lie in keeping a sense of proportion and being more empathetic towards the loss and suffering of others? Is it even an achievable goal? Or should one go the Buddhist way of cultivating equanimity? When does equanimity even appear on the scene, if at all? Art and literature have some answers to offer.
What Shapes Individual Legacy
From Greek tragedy’s concepts of catharsis to Brechtian appropriation of the same to Mahmoud Darwish’s poetry of everyday loves and losses, there is some merit in locating one’s grief, or any other emotion for that matter, within a larger context. That location is where the individual legacy begins. This legacy expands the context for those coming on the scene in future. “I don’t think about legacy. The only thing that I do is stay honest on an everyday basis. Maybe that’s what creates a legacy of truth,” Mridul says about her legacy as an artiste and now writer.
Sandhya Mridul’s book of grief and wisdom was launched recently at the Dehradun Literature Festival. The theme of this year’s edition was Sahitya (literature), Cinema, Samaj (society). At a time when the Indian cinema industry is staring at a crisis, it is the authenticity of acknowledgement of one’s vulnerability and, more importantly, shortfalls that can act as the leitmotif for recovery. The road to recovery is not a tame one.
(Nishtha Gautam is a Delhi-based author and academic.)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author
