And no, I am not going to be talking about that
2006 series that initially raised sweet, sweet hopes with an original plotline,
a deliciously twisted supervillain and a wonderfully bonkers tagline that went
"Save the cheerleader, save the world". Though it does seem in a way
appropriate as a metaphor for this year, a year when drowning of great hopes
seemed to be fate's favorite trick and when absurdities became hyper-real.
Can we agree that the previous centuries greatest
cultural flourishes all came in the period upto the 1980s? That would be true
for my generation at least (a generation that came of age in the 1990s), in a
time when cultural appropriations took 2-3 years to travel from west to east.
We have lived through some momentous years which have led to an incredible
co-option of western mores as our own at a speed which would make Space Ghost
blink behind his mask. The history that we were reading in our schools, even
modern history (which usually ended with the establishment of the non-aligned
movement and hardly ventured to the years after independence), was supplemented
by that slow awareness of the modern world which peeked and did not yet intrude
beyond the household curtains. I was (and am still) proud of my local history,
but that seems foolish and bloody-minded in view of the changes that are
happening and at a greater pace than ever.
This is then a lament for the past, of a time when
heroes were good and they strode like giants across culture consciousness. This
is about a time of black and white front pages and about when I cried on
hearing about Mother Teresa's death. This is when Mom returned from work and
told me that Diana had died and then we watched the memorial service on a
flickering TV screen (an Oscar purchased in 1988, since you ask). What I am
trying to say is that these people and therefore their deaths mattered. Maybe
it was because we had so few domestic icons to really speak of or because these
people really mattered in a way very few people now do. And as I get older
(yeah yeah), these icons, some of which I discovered after moving out of my
house, in my dissolute and curious youth, are going away. As we become more
integrated (another word for homogeneous maybe and therefore not the best thing
I sometimes think), we react faster and more intensely and at the same time
with less consequence. Thanks to pop-news and info-screens, the importance of
inconsequential (to my eyes) things are magnified and at the very same time,
social-media provides a vent to the masses which expectedly rants and
proselytizes and trolls and then heads back to the pods for harvesting by
advertisers. This must that dystopian sci-fi novel that got refused by so many
publishers and will be discovered in 50 years and then be declared as the most
prescient work ever (goodbye Jules Verne).
Anyway, I console myself thinking that it's but
time that treats us so. Woodstock and Vietnam, Thatcher-era Britain, the
Bangladesh war and the settlement of refugees, they will happen again, in other
guises and in other places maybe, but most of history is remarkably similar
isn't it. Triumphs and falls. Occasional heroes and geniuses, misfits and
philanthropists - all marking years and decades. Ingenuous and beautiful,
firebrands and peace-seekers. And sometimes a beautiful poetic turn. I couldn't
believe it when MJ died (and we are ignoring what he became later but choosing
to focus on his music) and when Robin Williams did. I guess it's the human
cycle and the real ask is that the chain doesn't break and that we don't become
culturally vacuous and morally bankrupt. The creative output that these people
shared will always exist and maybe we choose to remember and appreciate that.
To take courage and inspiration from them is what we can do and to not do that
is perhaps the silliest thing to do. So I ask you to read that book and listen
to that album and watch that film. There is immense joy to be had in savoring
those moments. When the future is unknown, the past can provide succour. And
maybe you'll create something in turn which will pay it all forward. Somebody
else might need it someday.
_____________________
This has been a sad year.
... 