Of love’s austere and lonely offices

For me, an iconic scene in Hansal Mehta's biopic on Professor Srinivas Ramchandra Siras, titled Aligarh, is a fleeting snapshot of Siras' démodé dressing table with a distinguishable blue jar of what can only be coconut oil sitting on top of it. It is only natural to associate routine objects we encounter on a daily basis, to personal experiences, people, and places. Spotting the blue jar of coconut oil instantly transported me to a shoebox corner of my ancestral house that belongs, exclusively, to my grandmother. In particular, it conjured the image of my grandmother's soaring mahogany cabinet where a host of items of daily use sit proudly, commanding a space they know is off-bounds. Among these items, below a rack of neatly stacked siparas and a tin box of cookies that now house knitting supplies, is an identical blue jar of coconut oil; it stands in stark contrast to the bashful peach tint of the cough syrup and the unobtrusive yellow of the petroleum jelly, pale in front of the greasy, blue, plastic frame. As I walk back home from the theatre, I fixate on that scene which is, admittedly, just one among the many passing visuals in a drama that produces far more compelling and profound vignettes from the kaleidoscope of one human's experiences. I think about the blue jar, my grandmother, a woman mired by loneliness, and by that association, a woman, perhaps, in a far better position to understand Siras' anguish.

Siras' solitary hours spent singing along to the tunes of old Hindi songs hit home, finding a parallel in my grandmother's imagined conversations with the politicians on TV who leave her largely unimpressed. On any given day, you can pass her by, lying in her signature foetal position on the sprawling divan in the living room, wagging a frail finger at the TV screen split into six boxes, asserting her political agency. On the surface, both these scenes generate a laughter born out of endearment – a cursory reaction from otherwise well-meaning individuals. After all, who wouldn't love an old man smitten by antiquated love ballads, or an old woman bursting with opinions on the latest parliamentary debate? It's the stuff of tea-break conversations, points of reminiscences for the next grand family get-together. However, if one were so inclined to do a deeper character study, they would find the veneer splitting to expose pitch-black isolation. Siras' song sessions, and my grandmother's parley with her political adversaries are, after all, coping mechanisms to stave off loneliness.