Strange realizations
The problem is, being a voyeur. Yes, all of us are voyeurs. Perverted, filthy, privacy intruding voyeurs. But anyway, you get old, and weak, and mean, and strange. You do things to piss off others around you. Retirement is a horrible thing. You need people you can depend on. I don’t want to get old like that.
At home, I look at my parents, and my grandfather. My grandfather is full of useless stories and stringent, passionate idealism that has, probably, stood in the way of progress and development. Both, at the personal level, and, if generalized, at the national level. I mean, why would you talk about Akbar and Shershah and Ram and Laxman all the time? You just want to say something, and don’t want to be counter questioned. You want to win. Like always. Win at some strange level every time. Be the only one who’s right. Considering his age, we don’t reply. We just listen, and leave it there. At the dining table. Old age becomes some kind of a rhetoric unless you do something you can do for the rest of your life. You want to be important and live in a bubble thinking so. I have realized, that in the context of – let alone my neighbours – even my elder brother, I am not important.
In Alexander Payne’s About Schmidt, Jack Nicholson’s Schmidt retires, his wife dies…and he’s…shocked, but more than that he’s stupefied. He’s got nothing else to do! And no one else who’d tolerate him! What kind of a state is that? And that’s true for my grand dad as well…I think you become spiritual in the old age because you want to try to make sense; feel important. And your brain’s functionality has considerably slowed down, and everybody sees you as a victim (of the old-age), and you feel as if “what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-these-guys?”. All the time. But my grand dad is absolutely getting weak with age. Everyday he asks me if I have completed my bachelors. Someday he asks me if I hold a BA, another day he asks me if I hold a B.Sc. I politely tell him I hold a B.Tech., everytime, everytime he asks me. Other than that, his memory is pretty fine. He remembers when you were mean to him, he remembers when you made him feel weak. You never do that, actually. You never try to make him feel weak, it’s just that his ego steps in, all the time.
And, for all the sacrifices you make for him, he’s got nothing but bitterness for you in return. He never sees your sacrifices. I’m not complaining. Old age can make you bitter. Every bone in your body is acting against your wishes. You want to run away but all you can do is…decamp. From your bedroom, to the dining room. And back. Life is, in fact, like Michel Haneke’s “Amour”, or Ingar Bergmann’s “Wild Strawberries” or “Cries and Whispers”. How important it is for our cinema to be sensitive. Unless we don’t pick up the beacon, we don’t quite improve.
Few days ago my mother was having trouble with standing up; on her legs. She’s getting old, and weak, as she ages. She’s also acquired a temperament I haven’t quite known earlier. Earlier she’d ignore people telling her things, now she’s started retaliating. Sooner or later it was going to happen. Same is true for my father as well. He was short tempered earlier. Now that has turned into silent bitterness. He doesn’t retaliate with anguish, now. He disconnects. Quietly, silently. Disconnection is something I have acquired from my dad, as well. Now I realize. Also, I am not sure if my parents will ever become like my grandparents. Because every successive generation is more intelligent than the previous. There’s a TED talk for the same. [Google: Why our IQ levels are higher than our grandparents.]
But I see bitterness growing with age. I don’t know how I’d age. I don’t want to age like that. Certainly not like that. I am too mean already, I don’t know what’s next. That’s another reason why I wish to be a film maker. So that I can do it as long as I can. In an interview with Anthony Hopkins, (that came out around the time of the release of the movie “Hitchcock”) he said he considered retirement. But he shouldn’t, his wife exclaimed. “You’ll die if you retire,” she told him. In “The Shawshank Redemption,” there’s a line “get busy livin’ or get busy dyin’.” I don’t want to get busy dyin’. I want to die just as a breeze went by. Doing something rather than watching silly daily soaps on TV like my grandfather and telling stories mostly irrelevant. Instead of trying to say things to add gravity to my presence, I’d rather do something, be something. Talk things that make sense instead of championing silly idealism that hasn’t taken any of us anywhere.
To hell with my siblings, future wife, kids, and others related. There is no one, absolutely no one to care for me in the future. The only person or thing that’ll matter is me, and I need to do something before I end up being an old man watching silly daily soaps day-in, day-out. And cursing everything and everyone around. While I think the old age is one, maybe, for being thankful.