The most unabashedly given advice on Writing is “Keep your eyes, ears, nose, open to life around you.” Javed Akhtar in a panel with Kausar Munir at Jashn-e-Rekhta said something around the same line, that women have been noticing inner world for so long that they have completely molten this life and are in sync with the outer world to give it the shape they want.
As much
there is a sense of upliftment to hear this, there is also a very thick line of
distinction – inner and outer world. There is no marvel in that adage anymore.
It is like seeing a cycle’s rubber tube being fixed when all other cars are
passing by. Cycle’s puncher being fixed is an image from the first decade of
2000 when ‘cycles’ were yet to be replaced with ‘bike’ and we were noticing
bubbles rising in a rusted tub, made of ferric oxide, earlier of ferrous oxide,
and much before that, when someone even called it just ferrum.
Some years
later, I will be reading The Years by Annie Ernaux, a
memoir that converses with that exact moment in the afternoon of December
in Dhyanchand Stadium when some of us were still thinking: “So what is this
inner world, what is domestic, what do you mean by women can see the small?” when
Annie Ernaux captures time. She creates a dimension
to hold. In that sense her memoir is also a poem on time. Guardian has done a
better review than I can ever give so this is just to confess that before
reading The Years I used to understand that all stories are majorly
about life. The Years is about time. In writing this she gave us
unputdownable story of a time and a space.
There is so
much I remember from the book and my notes prove it. It is the most highlighted
book on my kindle and yet I have not even consulted it once before writing this
review. “All images will disappear” begins the preface. Memory is everything in
this.
In houses
that keep their windows open, do we ever make sense of the reflection that is
being captured by the glasses of these windows? I tend to think them as their
memories. That they see past, present and future, all in one go. Reading The
Years was that. It captured time from time. If one wants to see how time is
told, lived, and foregone, this is the book to notice bubbles rising from.