As a kid I had this firm belief that all we do throughout our lives is in accordance with a definite script. That every single person has a sharp, unconscious, built-in and regularly updated awareness of their role and that the very purpose of one’s existence was to act it all out to the satisfaction and amusement of immediate superiors. By ‘superiors’ I mean people with higher authority – then, that meant parents. And at every level, superiors decided the basic outline of the script their charges would enact.
The way I saw it, we were all theatre artists. So just like we could go to Vishnudas Bhave Natyagraha, NCPA and Prithvi Theatre to watch people enact certain stories, I figured our superiors were watching us too. Big Boss style, absolutely.
So you had kids who were their parents’ puppets and so on until you exhausted living familial hierarchy; then came some mid level authority that I never thought about; and at the very top of that controlling pyramid sat The Gods. Oh yes, I was a believer back then, Dadi took care of that… I have fond memories of those times. No, don’t try it now.
Getting back to my story – which I believe you’re still somewhat interested in since you’re still reading – I used to visualize usually homogeneous pairs of Gods and Goddesses in stereotypical God/Goddess garb [flowing black hair (white for Brahma), loads of skin show, glitzy blingy ornaments, silky satiny rhinestone-studded clothes...] sitting on separate sofas that flanked a coffee table loaded with grub (they always always always had peanuts), laughing at the antics of us mortals as giant spools of real time footings played on giant Videocon Bazooka screens. Laughing good naturedly, indulgently, never mockingly, but laughing nonetheless. Real time? Dunno how they did it.
The way I saw it, we were all theatre artists. So just like we could go to Vishnudas Bhave Natyagraha, NCPA and Prithvi Theatre to watch people enact certain stories, I figured our superiors were watching us too. Big Boss style, absolutely.
So you had kids who were their parents’ puppets and so on until you exhausted living familial hierarchy; then came some mid level authority that I never thought about; and at the very top of that controlling pyramid sat The Gods. Oh yes, I was a believer back then, Dadi took care of that… I have fond memories of those times. No, don’t try it now.
Getting back to my story – which I believe you’re still somewhat interested in since you’re still reading – I used to visualize usually homogeneous pairs of Gods and Goddesses in stereotypical God/Goddess garb [flowing black hair (white for Brahma), loads of skin show, glitzy blingy ornaments, silky satiny rhinestone-studded clothes...] sitting on separate sofas that flanked a coffee table loaded with grub (they always always always had peanuts), laughing at the antics of us mortals as giant spools of real time footings played on giant Videocon Bazooka screens. Laughing good naturedly, indulgently, never mockingly, but laughing nonetheless. Real time? Dunno how they did it.
Even then, I could see how it was funny… I mean c’mon, you have all these humans falling over themselves to be promoted just some more, wanting to be in a position that allows them to decide the actions of so many others around them. By the time a global drama inclusive of all levels was actually put together, it was probably a holy comedy of errors. Pun, haha, pun.
I always wondered if tapes of the part I was enacting were important enough to be viewed by the Gods themselves or if they only reached the city-level authority for perfunctory checks and were then tossed aside. Never did quite manage to figure that out. Nor did I work out how the tapes reached the gods (Bluetooth ka baap?) or how scripts were communicated to us actors – we just knew what to do and went about doing what we had to, unaware of this twisted manipulation. Mind you, we experienced joy, frustration, ecstasy, sorrow, anger, embarrassment and just about every regular emotion you can think of while we were at it.
Doodlebug, a short film by Christopher Nolan and crew, was what brought this eerily vivid piece of imagination to the surface.
And just in case the idea of Hindu gods living on Indian land and ruling/governing/ manipulating/spying on the entire world offends you, my 5 yr old self apologizes. That was what I knew, okay?
PS – Please don’t start working out why my mind functions the way it does/ the way it always has. You might be tempted to suggest I take up Management, seeing how I had pyramidal admin structures, checks and controls, authority and regulation all worked out at the age of 5. Don't. You might be tempted to probe tomes on Psychology and comment on my concept of the unconscious or reveal that it has to do with a repressed desire to control / act / manipulate / tell stories / eat peanuts. Speculate all you want, just don’t tell me. The way I bombed my Psychology end sem, I don’t think I’ll welcome anything connecting me and the subject for a long long time to come.
I always wondered if tapes of the part I was enacting were important enough to be viewed by the Gods themselves or if they only reached the city-level authority for perfunctory checks and were then tossed aside. Never did quite manage to figure that out. Nor did I work out how the tapes reached the gods (Bluetooth ka baap?) or how scripts were communicated to us actors – we just knew what to do and went about doing what we had to, unaware of this twisted manipulation. Mind you, we experienced joy, frustration, ecstasy, sorrow, anger, embarrassment and just about every regular emotion you can think of while we were at it.
Doodlebug, a short film by Christopher Nolan and crew, was what brought this eerily vivid piece of imagination to the surface.
And just in case the idea of Hindu gods living on Indian land and ruling/governing/ manipulating/spying on the entire world offends you, my 5 yr old self apologizes. That was what I knew, okay?
PS – Please don’t start working out why my mind functions the way it does/ the way it always has. You might be tempted to suggest I take up Management, seeing how I had pyramidal admin structures, checks and controls, authority and regulation all worked out at the age of 5. Don't. You might be tempted to probe tomes on Psychology and comment on my concept of the unconscious or reveal that it has to do with a repressed desire to control / act / manipulate / tell stories / eat peanuts. Speculate all you want, just don’t tell me. The way I bombed my Psychology end sem, I don’t think I’ll welcome anything connecting me and the subject for a long long time to come.
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