Dear friend,
It has been about eight years now since we last met. I vividly and fondly remember our last meeting at my Delhi flat, us sipping wine and pointlessly discussing authors and film-makers we adored. You were a frequent visitor to my self-curated film festivals and it was a pleasure to host someone with so much thirst for life and hunger for art.
Today I write to you, not sure whether this email will even reach you or stay unread or bounce back undelivered. It was while reading Camus' book 'Personal Writings', I was reminded of you and our conversations around this charming writer. I even made a futile attempt at searching for you on social media and I must say that your absence was quite anticipated but admirable. Hope you will respond to my email as I would want to know your side of eight years gone by.
Personally, to my discomfort and also with some sense of achievement, I feel more grown up. I speak more sense now and less of non-sense (super-sense as you called it). Don't ask me why I have reduced this non-sense (or super-sense) part, I guess this also comes with a package of growing up. You start caring more or should I say that you start thinking more as to how others would react and end up limiting or binding yourself. On the contrary, the beautiful part of this package is that you expect less from people and their good feelings, acts of friendships and noble deeds seem like miracles to cherish.
I get to speak non-sense now only to kids of my friends or relatives. They enjoy such stuff or should I say that they are the only people capable of enjoying such stuff. When you play hide and seek with a four year old kid, the game is so much fun. She would hide behind that curtain or a door despite being completely aware that you are standing and noticing her. Then you act the struggle of seeking her in that exciting game of hide and seek and finally when you find her, she would jump with joy of being found. That's a sign of a successful game - that it must end. I was once answering to my friends' daughter with some non-fictional excuses of dwarfs, fairies and magic to a very sensible question of hers. My friend's wife objected to me telling lies to her daughter and instead asked me to give her the right and scientific logic to her questions.
Speaking of grown-ups, they are a crazy lot. My friend was once narrating about his grandmother who was diagnosed with a fatal disease and doctors had given her a month's time to get all her wishes fulfilled. Instead, she asked her son to get her the bank's passbook updated. My friend reminded her that she was going to die and asked her about where was she going to go with so much money in her bank account. She said that all the principal and interest accumulation gave her peace and who didn't want to die in peace. One fine day, his father got the passbook updated and she slept with the passbook clutched to her breast and next morning the grandmother's heart stopped beating. She died in peace with a smile on her face! Isn't it crazy?
Well, I am writing to you after so long and instead of telling you about my last eight years, I am telling you about some random comparison between children and grown-ups. Would you really be interested in knowing that I work for a multi-national company or in trivial details like greying of my hair? I am sure not. You would be more interested in knowing that this work from home has ensured that standing from my balcony I can witness sunsets everyday, you would want to know about the good books and some stories from the travels I would have experienced. But first I need to listen from you. You were quite a celebrated student at National School of Drama and quite close to the supersensical world of theater. I was a student of business studies and now am quite an ordinary ambassador of that MBA education as I preach people to take up art and instead develop their emotional intelligence.
I would leave the letter with some lines from Camus book (Personal Writings) I just finished. This book similar to my letter is reflective and laments the loss of innocence in the author's journey from age of 20 to 40.
" There is more love in these awkward pages than in all that have followed. Every artist thus keeps within himself a single source which nourishes during his lifetime what he is and what he says. When that spring runs dry, little by little one sees his work shrivel and crack. These are arts wastelands, no longer watered by the invisible current..... yet nothing prevents one from dreaming in the very hour of exile, since at least I know this, with sure and certain knowledge: a man’s work is nothing more but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened."
Shall wait for your response!
Till then, take care!
-vC
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